I remember what it was like to feel alone; to wonder whether I was "crazy," to see my life as hopelessly pointless. I recall brooding over thoughts that life was not worth living and even trying to kill myself. All that was long ago, and I'm still here because I was lucky to find a therapist who helped me gain a new perspective on life. In the years since I experienced all that, I've found and created for myself many reasons to live. I've been able to develop relationships with devoted, nurturing friends and family and have learned how to develop activities that not only give me pleasure but the opportunity to do worthwhile work. As a therapist, I try to pass on what I've learned to clients.

Over the course of many years of social work training and coping with the vicissitudes of my own life, I have concluded that suffering comes from being subjected to real life trials in combination with an inability to choose constructive ways of coping with those difficulties. My job as therapist gives me an opportunity to help clients make better choices so they can play whatever hand they've been dealt as effectively as possible.

Coping With Abuse
A great deal of my professional therapeutic work has centered on abuse of women by intimate partners. But I have learned that the most harmful abuse often comes from what we do to ourselves. Below, I describe my work with abused and battered women as one example of my therapy methods, but many of the same principles apply to other sources of mistreatment: by parents, employers, friends and -- most importantly - ourselves.

If You Feel Trapped In Your Situation, What Can You Do?
If you are subjected to controlling, bullying, manipulative or violent behavior by a partner, boss or anyone trying to gain power over you, I can help you:

1. develop a plan for your emotional and financial security and physical safety.
2. clarify what is being done to you.
3. recognize how abuse affects your feelings and prevents you from achieving the quality of life you want.
4. weigh the physical, social, emotional and financial risks of staying in the relationship against those of leaving.
5. decide on the next steps to take to achieve the goals you have chosen.
6. find emotional and practical support for whatever path you take.
7. evaluate whether your plan is working well.
8. If the plan doesn't succeed, together we modify it, until it produces results.

Depending on your situation and your goals this process can be short or long term. I can help, whether you are a man or a woman, a parent or adult child and whether you are in a situation where the abuser is an intimate partner, a boss or someone in a different role. Click on www.abusedwomen.org to see my publications website, then click on HELP NOW to read excerpts from my books for abused women. Completing the exercises in my books can speed your therapy results.

My Expectations of Clients
As a client, you decide what steps you are willing to take to achieve your goals of feeling better, gaining more control of your life or improving relationships. You decide whether you want to change and monitor your thoughts. You choose to practice activities that enhance your self-confidence, energy and social interactions. After trying them out, you decide whether they are useful or not. If they don't achieve the desired results or if you don't want to do the activities I suggest, we revise them together, to discover which actions will help you stay on your chosen track.

Once you have practiced the skills you learn in counseling sessions, you can continue on your own to gain even more control of your thoughts and actions. You will be on your way to becoming your own counselor-coach. You will hold yourself accountable for staying with your new habits. You will know how to give yourself pep talks as, step-by-step, you continue to achieve more of your goals. I offer the option of sessions for occasional "tune-ups" in person or by telephone or e-mail.