Who I Work With: I do cognitive and behavioral therapies for people suffering from anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, social anxiety, and especially obsessive compulsive problems. Since there are not many accomplished behavior therapists in this region, I also work with people who have more unique behavioral problems, such as less common addictive behaviors, and children and parents on some parenting issues. I work with people of all ages, from toddlers to senior citizens.

Types of Therapy: I do behavioral therapy which works because changing your behavior will improve your thoughts and feelings. It is a very important part of successful treatment for all kinds of anxiety. Put most simply: The more scared you act, the more scared you get. Conversely, the more scared you act, the more scared you get. Thus, learning to change your behavior and do those things you are afraid of will quickly make you less afraid. When working with younger children, I teach the parents and caregivers to use behavior modification techniques, which is a variant of behavior therapy.

I also do cognitive therapy, which works on the premise that how we feel about things does not really come from what is happening to us. Rather, our feelings come from what we think about what is happening to us. Thus, if you change how you think, you’ll change how you feel.

My Goals in Treating Someone: Regardless of whom I am working with, or what their problems are, my goal is to help them get better. But my ultimate goal is to teach them to be their own cognitive behavioral therapist. This is because anxiety problems have a tendency to reoccur throughout one’s life, often years or decades later. If you become your own therapist, you’ll know what to do if it should ever begin to come back. Of course, I’ll be available to be your consultant.

How I do Therapy: I usually treat people by meeting personally with them in one of my offices. I usually meet a person one-on-one, or with the parents and the child, in the case of younger children. Therapy is focused on learning new skills to face your fears and better manage your anxiety. It does not take a long time, and I usually do not talk to you about your mother. It is very here and now oriented, rather than focusing on the past.

I have an ongoing behavior therapy group specifically for adults with obsessive compulsive problems. The group has been going on for over 15 years, with many changes of characters, of course. Everyone has obsessive compulsive disorder, and everyone is doing behavior therapy. The group format allows people to learn the behavior therapy skills and tools as applied to others besides themselves, making them more skillful behavior therapists overall.

I also work with people via the telephone and Internet. After an initial evaluation where I determine whether I think I can be of enough help to someone on such a limited basis, I agree to work with some people through regular phone and email contacts. Eventually, I plan to develop this website into a behavior therapy website where much of the work I currently do with people on an individual basis will also be available to people via streaming video and down-loadable text documents. At that time we will be able to substitute web conferencing for telephone and email contacts. So come back to the website in the future for further details.