Current Availability:Telehealth treatment of anxiety, panic attacks, depression, trauma, and coping with illness. Free initial phone consultations are available. I have a waiting list and am only accepting new patients if referred specifically to me by their physicians.
Compassionate Treatment for panic, depression, trauma, insomnia, and coping with medical illness.
What Are You Looking For?
Peace of Mind
Peace of Mind seems so unattainable for many. Relaxation training and mindfulness can help to quiet the mind.
Think Differently
Our experience can be much more stressful if we interpret them in maladaptive ways. Cognitive therapy can help develop a revised perspective through “reframing” and cognitive restructuring.
Feel Differently
Troublesome emotions are often the result of our perspective, biases, and habitual negative thoughts. Some people have excessively strong emotions while others seem rather devoid of a rich emotional life. Trauma and a life of having others invalidate our feelings can leave lasting scars. Therapy can help process traumatic experiences, navigate around negative thinking, and question unkind thoughts about ourselves.
Self-soothe
Strong emotions can overwhelm rational thought, disrupt effective communication, and cause one to be misunderstood by others. Negative self-statements (internal dialogue) may only worsen the situation by contributing to biased perception. Relaxation, meditation, and mindfulness can lead to the development of the ability to quell disruptive emotional reactions, develop an internal sense of calm, lower bodily arousal (fight or flight), and set the offer a choice in how to respond instead of responding negatively and automatically.
Sleep Better
Individualized forms of cognitive therapy can help reduce symptoms of insomnia. This approach includes sleep restriction, sleep hygiene, reconditioning, relaxation, meditation, and reviewing attitudes and beliefs about sleep.
Act Differently
Bad habits and unhealthy lifestyles can be changed. Change starts with awareness and acceptance and is reinforced by a commitment to take control. Strong emotions can lead us to act in ways that we would not otherwise endorse. Learning emotional self-regulation can free us to be the people we want to be.
Relate Differently
Improved communication skills and improving the ability to understand another’s point of view can learn to more harmonious relationships. Especially important is the ability to effectively communicate feelings. This sometimes requires that we bocome better at recognizing and naming our feelings, especially negative ones.
Change the Way Your Body Responds to Stress
Stress can not be avoided. Its effects on our body and mind can be minimized though. Relaxation therapy, meditation, and biofeedback can change our response to stress.
Increase Motivation
As humans, we have an amazing ability to create a goal and formulate a plan for obtaining those desired results. Each step, vision, plan, and action can break down.
Increased Resilience
No matter how clear or vision or well formulated our plan, challenges are likely to present themselves. We can learn to be better able to roll with the punches and stay on track.
Increase Commitment
Awareness is important to achieving any of the goals mentioned on this page. Critical as well is acceptance of the current situation and commitment to change. Motivation is the desire to change, commitment is the ability to stay the course. It requires resilience. Setback are part of the process. Avoiding an attitude of defeat is an important step. Remember “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.” There is considerable wisdome encoded in that old tune.
Increased Self-control
Most of the problems listed here do not respond well if we apply the same kind of effort that we would if trying to overcome a physical obstacle. Instead a different kind of self-control like that used by an accomplished musician is required. Relaxation training, meditation and biofeedback are all useful in how to develop this second type of control.
Reduce the Need for Medication
Medication may be necessary in some cases to alleviate psychological pain or impediments. Cognitive therapy, relaxation, meditation, and lifestyle change can often reduce the need for medication. For many conditions, like major depression, reseach indicates that a combination of medication and cognitive therapy is the most effective means of alleviating the problem.
Listen to Settle Into Stillness, a preparation for mindfulness practice created for my patients and students.
Listen
Request a complimentary brief telehealth consultation.
(914) 666-0060 or [email protected]
Solutions for other therapists
For other therapists
It is possible to live a good life even if it’s not an easy life. Rachel Naomi-Remen