Individual Therapy for Adolescents and Adults
I have yet to meet anyone who has been blessed enough to avoid suffering in life. Life is too complicated and messy for that to ever be the case. We all have to find a way to be resilient, to continue on, in the face of life’s challenges. We all develop different strategies to accomplish this task. Most of those strategies, some we are only vaguely aware of, we learned when we were quite young. Maybe one learned that the shortfalls of childhood were evidence of low self worth. Or possibly one learned that others can’t ever really be relied upon because eventually they will abandon us. Maybe developing a strategy of leaving preemptively before having the chance to find out if this is true for every relationship. It’s tough business making sense out of the complexities of life, knowing oneself and how to connect with others, at a young age and yet this is exactly what we had to do. All those experiences shape who we are today playing a role in the options we see before us.
Therapy helps one confront those shaping experiences with an open mind. I will help in broadening your understanding, in providing an empathic and compassionate space to really look at why life has yet to fulfill you in the way you would like. A chance to heal from past wrongs, to find new ways to adapt. To find solutions to problems often repeated.
My Approach to Therapy
I practice from a psychoanalytic perspective. It’s an in-depth psychological approach which helps to foster insight and lasting change in people through conversation. Our work will involve an exploration of the full range of your emotions. Helping you put to words those emotions, at times contradictory ones, which play a role in motiving how you navigate through life. The more aware you are of how these influences shape your behavior the more agency you gain in life. There are times when we try to avoid or distance ourselves from certain thoughts or feelings and it will be my job to help you analyze this resistance. To explore if this is a suitable approach for you now. Maybe it worked for you before but is now keeping you stuck in a pattern of behaviors that doesn’t enhance your wellbeing. We will work to identify themes and patterns in your life that give you a richer appreciation of your story. As stated above, we will explore your past experiences especially with the important people who raised you. This exploration will help us set the stage for the early lessons learned about knowing yourself and connecting with others. Continuing with this idea, we will explore other important relationships you’ve had in your life. We will even reflect and explore aspects of our therapeutic relationship together. The early lessons learned apply to all relationships and often the therapeutic relationship becomes a deeply important way to exploring in-the-moment enactments of these lessons. My goal is to help you understand yourself to the fullest extent and to that end even your dreams, fantasies, desires and daydreams all provide different advantages to enriching that understanding. Give me a call and let’s discuss scheduling a consultation.
About Me
I am a master’s level psychologist with an office in Plymouth, MI at 42233 Ann Arbor Road. The office is conveniently located 1 mile west of I-275 in the PMC building.
I provide individual therapy for adolescents and adults. I specialize in working with individuals who suffer from social anxiety. Often this includes having panic attacks, performance anxiety, stage fright, fears of criticism from others or a difficulty engaging with others outside of necessity.