Are you passing? Are you Out but unfulfilled? Do you feel isolated? Who are you attracted to? Do you identify with any sexual orientation? Do you feel free to express your most authentic self? Do people affirm your personal experience of your gender? Does homophobia closet you? Do you undermine yourself through compulsive use of […]
Over my career, psychotherapeutic theory and technique have evolved to appreciate the fundamental power of relationship in our development and healing. I have done my own part in furthering this vitalizing work. I co-edited a book on psychotherapy with gay men in the age of AIDS, both specific to HIV and broadening to the frontiers […]
Relationship issues can surface as grief, loss, conflict, anger, feeling left out, feeling overwhelmed (hyper-responsible) or disconnected and depressed. These feelings may be triggered in current relationships. In our therapy relationship, you’ll grow to understand your current difficulties. We’ll also track patterns back to earlier relationships in your family of origin. Understanding the source of […]
What makes you vulnerable to low self-esteem? What makes you more resilient to life’s blows? Often the source of vulnerability is shame rooted in one’s core sense of not being worthy of love. This shame can show up in an array of symptoms: anxiety, depression, or self-medicating addiction. The source of this poor self-esteem is […]
In couples therapy, your relationship is our primary focus. Intimate relationships can be wonderfully fulfilling and also excruciatingly painful. In our most intimate relationships, we often reenact old dramas and get stuck in painful ruts. Without knowing it, we may pick or groom our partners to match characteristics of our earliest caregivers. Unconsciously, we often […]
Often in our group of origin (our family), we suffered from neglect or abuse. We didn’t have secure attachments and emotions were not regulated. In group therapy, as your group therapist, I help the group build trust which builds cohesion. In the newly forged safety of the group, the members risk grappling in the here […]
What helps us thrive? What makes us sick? Relationships can nurture or shame us. We are nurtured by expansive attachments to nature, place, family, peers, work, art, therapy and the arc towards social justice. We are shamed and smothered by rejecting and neglecting relationships of narrow norms of worth, identity, sexuality, and gender. I have […]
For gay male couples, intimacy has its own challenges. Early shaming about being different in gender role and different in sexual desire fosters defenses which protect the gay man from further exposure but at the same time create a barrier to being fully known. Homophobia and gender role constriction leave scarring hardships that often show […]
For lesbian couples, all the earlier dynamics of family of origin are present with the additional challenge of negotiating self-determined gender roles. There is freedom to be found in this and this can be exhausting due to limited external support. Isolation can undermine any couple’s capacity to negotiate inevitable conflict. This is especially true when the […]
