My Approach

(CBT, Hypnotherapy, TA, Reality Therapy, NLP and Biofeedback, EFT)

Different Perspective on Therapy

Maybe you have friends or family that went to therapy and only received marginal results. Maybe they didn’t change at all! Perhaps, they improved temporarily but eventually went back to the way they always were.

This experience is not so unusual. In fact, James Hillman and Michael Ventura in 2009 wrote a book called, We’ve had 100 years of psychotherapy and the world’s getting worse!

From the first phone call to the initial consultation and first session, you will realize how my approach to helping you is different from any therapist you have worked with before.

False Perceptions of Therapy

Do you think you will be “analyzed” while lying on a couch? Or, that you will endlessly focus on all the things that happened in the past and hope that “insight” will purge those bad thoughts and feelings?

You may think that learning to change your thoughts and behaviors, as if you were a student at school, will cause you to internalize these changes deeply and profoundly and cause great change.

Wrong!

From Irrational to Rational Thoughts

My approach to therapy uses a powerful combination of cognitive-behavior therapies (REBT, Reality Therapy, Positive Psychology and Transactional Analysis) to address the negative beliefs you have acquired since childhood.

These beliefs include the “universal” tendencies to minimize good events and maximize bad events, engaging in mind reading other’s thoughts and motivations, seeing things in black and white, or trying to predict what will happen in the future.

All of these are irrational and unrealistic thoughts.

Digging Deeper

But in addition, I go deeper to the “life scripts” you learned from your parents, friends, and even teachers. These are deeper and more individual than the “universal” cognitive distortions. They include thoughts such as, “You are only a success if you make money” or “A good person doesn’t argue.”

In addition, I help you make better choices by understanding that everything you do is designed to meet your need for love and belonging, freedom and autonomy, competence and success, and fun and learning.

How we meet these needs determines how happy and satisfied we will be. By changing how you perceive good and bad events, we will increase your happiness, optimism, and positivity.

Probing the Subconscious

Beyond the conscious disputing of these harmful negative thoughts, I address them at the subconscious level with the use of visualization, guided imagery, and hypnotherapy.

The subconscious is more open to hearing positive and realistic thoughts than the conscious mind. That is why when we dream, we can genuinely believe we are falling and have a physical reaction to it and wake up sweating.

The unreal can be made real.

Controlling Stress

With biofeedback, you will learn to control your physical reactions to stress, anxiety, and depression.

You will recognize when you are starting to feel anxious or stressed and use relaxation techniques to counter these physical (over)reactions.

Minimizing Negative Past Events

EMDR will help to desensitize you to negative past events, thoughts, and feelings and replace them with more positive, supportive, motivating, and realistic thoughts and feelings with the use of bilateral stimulation.

By adding this somatic (or bodily) component, it will deepen the changes of the cognitive, behavioral, and subconscious level.

Reframing Beliefs

NLP is a powerful tool that uses the way you experience the world to reduce or eliminate limiting beliefs and behaviors, and reframe and re-experience them in ways that are more realistic and useful. This can result in deep and profound changes quickly.

Physical Understanding

Finally, EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique, is another somatic therapy that uses “tapping” to deepen emotional experiences and “anchor” positive views and thoughts at the physical and body level.

Providing New and Beneficial Experience

You are in good hands!

Combined with my training and experience as a teacher, mediator, and lawyer, as well as social worker, counselor, and coach, I bring a unique blend of training, background, and knowledge that few, if any, other therapists have.

Please call today (516) 410-8241. Let me begin helping you live the kind of life you’ve always dreamed of!