About Daniel:
Approach to Therapy
A Whole Person Approach
Relational Psychodynamic Foundations
Integrated Methods
What is a Whole-Person Approach?
It’s a balanced therapeutic approach that engages you most fully by integrating a variety of therapeutic orientations. I combine relational psychodynamic therapy with other modalities — cognitive, somatic, and neurological — to work with you as fully as possible.
So I invite you….
Engage with me at multiple levels:
Intellect
Exercising careful and reasoned reflection, making logical connections, problem solving, “figuring things out”: these result in self-knowledge and insight.
Somatic Awareness
Cultivating awareness of your body: this elevates your ability to know, resolve, and regulate painful emotions and experiences
Wakeful Dreaming
Engaging associative, spontaneous, and imagistic modes of thinking: These open you to multiple perspectives and a greater range of emotions and self-experiences.
Imagination and Creativity
Creative imagining enhances your awareness of possibilities, your capacity to formulate new perspectives, and embrace a greater range of feelings.
Emotion
Accessing more and deeper emotions positively impacts your well-being and expands the breadth of your emotional life.
Neural Processing
Activating healthy and adaptive brain processes: this helps you to regulate emotions, think more clearly, and reduce the impact of maladaptive and painful memories.
What is Relational Psychodynamic Therapy?
It’s the foundation of our work — we look deeply and with compassion into your experience, we explore the role of your past in the present, and I support you through a close and collaborative working relationship. It’s called a “relational” approach because we learn much about you by thinking about our connection in this process. And the fact is, the power of change comes significantly from the unique chemistry of our therapeutic relationship.
So here’s what you can expect….
You can Expect
We will Collaborate, as Partners
I’ll be right in there with you throughout as your guide and support. Together we will build greater awareness and understanding of your life and experience. On occasion, I’ll nudge you to go further, imagine things differently, or allow yourself to slow down when needed.
We will Explore Deeply and Make Discoveries
We will explore your past deeply to understand how it impacts your life in the present. We stand to discover entrenched patterns (of thought, emotion, action) that stand in your way. Equally important, we stand to rediscover aspects of your self that have been lost or never fully realized.
We will Imagine, Dream, and Create
We will cultivate change and open up new self-awareness through imaginative, non-rational processes – the dream-like and creative activities that foster self-expansion. So, while effective therapy is sometimes challenging and painful, it is also sometimes playful and fun.
Integrated Methods
With your consent, we can integrate additional, practical methods into our work.
Including…..
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) that can help you to work through and reprocess painful memories. See more on EMDR in the Trauma section.
- Mindful Practices to help reorient yourself to your own experience through a stable attitude of inquiry and calm, based upon Buddhist principals.
- Sensory-Motor Techniques that help bring the emotional wisdom of your body into conscious self-awareness and to better know, express, and regulate emotions
- Control-Mastery Theory (CMT) and elements of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that help us to identify and disable the problematic assumptions and patterns of thought that impact your relationships and quality of life.
