Self Help Blog

Telehealth Counseling Now Available

During this time of national emergency due to Covid-19, I am now offering mental health counseling services via telehealth, which means over the phone (landline), cellphone, (including face-to-face, and also over a HIPAA approved, secure platform, which will work over computer or smartphone as well.   My current clients have quickly become comfortable with this, knowing that they will receive the same service they would normally receive at my office, while remaining in a safe place, such as in their home, their car, or any private and safe setting. Clients from outside of Maryland are now allowed to use my services as well. I am offering these services for new clients and you can learn more about that process here. Most insurance companies will pay for this service, often waiving copays, during these times. You may confirm this with your insurance company by using the customer care number on the back of your insurance card. You can use your phone to take a picture of your insurance information and email it to me.

We’re Transitioning To Telehealth

Notice to current and prospective clients: UPDATE: April 2020 – We are now offering HIPAA teleconference services. Please read more here. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic emergency situation, I have had to close the doors of my physical office, in an effort to ensure safety of myself and all my clients. Like many local providers of mental and behavioral health services, I am now offering Telehealth platforms. The majority of my clientele have made this switch, and we are all adjusting nicely to this change.  The  HIPAA compliant Telehealth platforms I am currently using are Doxy Me and Simple Practice. Both of these let us speak with complete privacy over your computer or smartphone.  It is actually a similar experience to being in my office, except my client is in the comfort of his or her own home, or in another private place, such as office, bedroom, basement, or even in the car. If there are occasional problems with connectivity, under the current state of emergency, telephone calls, Skype or FaceTime are also allowed.   If you are considering becoming a new client in these stressful times, I can talk to you first by phone (free 15-minute consultation) about how…

Could Hypnosis Help Me?

“Don’t think about a lemon.” Now: are you not thinking about a lemon? Most people are thinking about a lemon when they read or hear this statement. This is why it is so difficult for people to change by simply resolving, to do something differently than they did before, such as losing weight, stopping smoking, overcoming a fear or insomnia, or other things. They focus on what they don’t want, but the subconscious mind takes over, and the attempt to change fails. How frustrating that, try though you may, you cannot make the change you desperately want.  What is HYPNOSIS and how does it work? Hypnosis is a state of mind in which your subconscious mind is dominating over your conscious mind. We all move into and out of light states of hypnosis everyday. For example, have you ever been driving your car down a road, fully awake, yet wondered how you got to where you are driving? This is a common occurrence. Another time when a person is in a light state of hypnosis is right before awakening. Finally when under stress, especially severe stress, our subconscious mind is dominant and we are in a highly suggestible state.  It…

Non-Directive Hypnotherapy and Mind-Body Strategies

Healing after traumatic experiences have become an ever more acknowledged need in the field of mental health.  Trauma underlies many emotional symptoms and adverse behaviors. One does not need to have experienced time on the battlefield or child abuse in order to have scars and ill-adaptive behaviors later in life. Exploring the unconscious mind to search for underlying factors, then installing curative changes in beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, can occur in non-directive approaches to hypnotherapy.  Regression therapy asks the mind to go back to an initial causative event when a maladaptive behavior began. (Examples could be something that would lead to an addiction, or even to inappropriate simple responses to other circumstances.) Sometimes, a pattern cannot be noted to be readily determinable. In “past life regression”, for example, a story emerges from the mind, (whether a true “past life” or not), which brings new, symbolic understandings and solutions to “this life” issues.  Such strategies relate to work done by a highly acclaimed early psychiatrist, Carl Jung. People who have experienced trauma, (sometimes thought to be 70 percent of the adult population) can become “triggered” and return to a stressed, “fight-flight” state of mind;  perhaps the triggering event would seem like nothing…

Stress Relief Through EFT and Other Energy Psychology Methodologies

It’s now becoming more recognized that the whole body holds an imprint of stress. Interestingly, some healing traditions are ancient. Acupuncture, for instance, has been traced back to about five thousand years. Compare that to the science behind conventional medicine, which had its roots in the nineteenth century. I like to teach some strategies derived from ancient traditions,  from the arena of energy psychology, to assist with rapid symptom relief and rebalance physically and emotionally. I’ve found that Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is an easy-to-learn strategy that can quickly bring down the stress response within minutes, thus acting as an aid to correcting emotional dysregulation.  It also has some more sophisticated applications which can help to heal underlying “root causes”, thus able to be used in more complex situations. This carefully crafted technique utilizes a system of tapping or massaging certain acupuncture points while repeating certain phrases in a certain order.  This seems to instill a relaxation response, thus allowing the brain to be more receptive to a different way of thinking and responding. While the ever-expanding field of helping strategies can be overwhelming, I like to help my client to find “whatever works” best. “Thoughts are things” – changing one’s…