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Doug seeks first to understand, and to help individuals in relationship understand one another. He will help you explore the past for clues to the present, and identify effective tools for crafting your future.
APPOINTMENTS: Please call or email: HOURS & FEES I do not accept insurance, but offer a sliding scale fee based on combined household income, as follows: Income-range / fee per session:
Office hours:
Your gift helps first responders, active duty military, clergy, educators, and others who are unable to afford the lowest sliding scale counseling fee.
(Donations are not tax deductible.) |
Treatment Approaches:
ATTACHMENT-BASED Attachment theory explores basic human relational needs, especially as met in parent-child relationships during developmental formation, and influencing later relationships. EMOTIONALLY FOCUSED THERAPY (EFT) EFT helps clients identify, understand, and manage their emotional responses, especially in the context of relationships. This therapeutic approach helps persons "dig deeper" to the vulnerable primary emotion(s) that drive self-defensive secondary emotions. Relationally-distancing secondary emotions are unmasked, their prime roots identified, and methods learned to ask trustworthy partners for our wants and needs, rather than withdraw for self-protection. EFT in couples therapy seeks to transform communication, forming patterns that allow relational intimacy to again be enjoyed. GOTTMAN Dr. John Gottman (University of Washington) and his team at The Gottman Institute have scientifically studied over 4,000 couples during the course of four decades, looking for recurrent factors in happy relationships and marriages. His findings are distilled in the Institute's courses: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (which identifies the six destructive patterns that lead to relationship demise, and the seven principles behind the happy marriages of "master couples") and Bringing Baby Home (which applies explains same principles, along with added information on how becoming parents affects a marriage). In addition to leading the above seminars, I apply Gottman Method Couples Therapy, based on the same research, to my work with couples. EMDR Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapy that targets past experiences that become triggered during normal day-to-day living, resulting in disproportionate disturbance and unwanted responses. Used effectively with victims of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the technique has also proven effective with low self-esteem, panic attacks, complicated grief, abuse, flashbacks, phobias, performance anxiety, as well as other conditions. EMDR therapy depends upon "bilateral stimulation" of the brain. Through non-electric, non-invasive stimulation of the left and right hemispheres of the brain through eye movement, and/or auditory and/or tactile stimulation, subjects focus on the full neuronetwork of unprocessed or maladaptivley processed experiences and memories that are the root(s) of unwanted thoughts and reactions. Successful treatment results in less disturbance of the body, mind, and emotions, and a more adaptive responses to triggers. PREPARE/ENRICH RELATIONSHIP ASSESSMENT Prepare/Enrich is an online customized couple assessment tool, developed by Dr. David Olson, that identifies a couple's similarities, differences, strengths, and areas for growth. It is one of the most widely used inventories for to assist couples and counselors in premarital and marital counseling. The results highlight how the two are alike, how they differ, where they have the same or different perspectives, and what (at the time of the assessment) are their relational strengths and growth areas. The results help to tailor and focus the couple's sessions. SYMBIS PREMARITAL RELATIONSHIP ASSESSMENT The SYMBIS (Save Your Marriage Before It Starts) assessment was developed by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, authors of the book of the same name. It is designed to help pastors and counselors focus their premarital counseling sessions with couples. The assessment identifies similarities and differences in personality, attachment styles, approach to money, conflict resolution styles, spirituality, and more. |
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