Psychotherapy

I was originally trained in the Psychoanalytic model of psychotherapy. This was particularly valuable because of its focus on the past and how the past influences the present. Psychoanalytic theory taught me the importance of early childhood development and what can go wrong. Thus, I am able to use this information when I evaluate you to better understand the root cause of your emotional distress. As I grew professionally, I started focusing more on the present moment and less on the past. I began to incorporate techniques from Cognitive Behavior Therapy where the goal is to change thought patterns and beliefs. To keep myself healthy, I began the practice of yoga and meditation. This not only reduced my stress, but it gave me a new perspective on human behavior and how to change it. The importance of mindfulness and developing awareness and compassion blended nicely with Positive Psychology. For the first time, the focus is on what is right with you rather than what is wrong—- that is, a shift from pathology to wellness. Being in therapy with me is like talking to a great teacher. I educate. I inspire. I explain. I clarify. I comfort. I guide. I even laugh at times (a sense of humor is important). But most importantly—I interact with you. My talent is to make you feel safe so we can connect and share together. I work with individuals and couples, from late adolescence to late in life. My practice is by appointment only and I accept insurance.

Nutrition

“Until a man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called knowledge. Remedies from chemicals will never stand in favorable comparison with products of nature.”
– Thomas Edison

There is probably no greater area of science that is in disagreement with itself than nutrition. Ever wonder why nutrition studies demonstrate so many conflicting results? Well, it’s because all human beings are unique with unique genotypes (DNA). There is no one-size-fits-all. Ever! Just about every diet in existence will help people lose weight. Diets work well for losing weight…but they fail miserably for maintaining the weight loss. In a culture obsessed with appearance and weight, we’ve gotten our focus on the wrong thing. By focusing only on weight, we miss the bigger picture—which is your health. When you fix your health, weight loss is a side effect.

Four Facts About Nutrition

1. Food is information—food is not just calories for rebuilding our bodies and providing energy. Food has the power to switch our genes on and off thereby influencing how they express themselves. This new area of science is called Nutrigenomics.

2. Nutrition is both a science and an art—while the science of nutrition is well understood, the art of nutrition is poorly understood. This involves the psychology of eating and how to get people to change their lifestyle habits. Psychologically, eating behavior is very complex and trying to change people’s attachment to favorite foods is challenging to say the least.

3. Nutrition has the greatest impact on changing your health. Of all the known ways of improving your health (exercise, yoga, stress reduction, companionship, prayer, detoxing your body, and sleep) none have the ability to improve overall health more than the food you eat. (A recent study showed exercise at 15% and nutrition at 80% for health outcomes).

4. You are a human-bacteria hybrid being. You have 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells in your body. You have 100 times more bacterial DNA than human DNA. The 100 trillion bacteria which live mostly in your gut influence every aspect of your health and are responsible for how the food you eat gets converted to nutrients. This new area of research is called the Microbiome.

DNA Testing

For the first time in history, physical and mental wellness can be taken to its ultimate level. The future of healing is here now with personalized medicine. Believe it or not, humans are 99.5% genetically the same. Yet that 0.5% difference is what really matters. After all, it accounts for 30 million letters in the genetic code. If one of the letters in the coding varies, it’s called a SNP or Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (pronounced “snips”). This causes the DNA to produce too much or too little of a protein and this can have significant consequences in any part of the body. By analyzing a small saliva sample, we can now measure hundreds, even thousands of SNP’s and determine where potential risks are for many diseases and health conditions. Now, the exciting part of all this is that we have control over most of our genes. We used to think that all genes were fixed and that whatever you inherited is what you got. This is actually incorrect and we now know that genes are turned on and off by the environment. You actually have the ability to change what your genes will do by how much you exercise, how much sleep you get, how well you manage stress, how happy you are, what kind of thoughts you create, and of course–what kind of foods you consume!