When you are working with someone around issues of intimacy, you need the right fit between your personality and the therapist’s treatment approach. Good psychotherapy requires a therapeutic match and collaborative effort between the therapist and the patient. What happens in the therapy office has an impact on your inner life and outside world. The goals of therapy are as varied as the people who pursue it. Ultimately, therapy helps you to change your life, your understanding of yourself and others, your satisfaction with work and personal life regardless of the reason(s) that brought you through the office door. Feel free to schedule a consultation to gauge your feelings about working with me.
A good clinician is one who is experienced and fully trained in depth and scope, able to bring practical results. A good clinician is trained in the widest area of life’s difficulties. A good clinician is sensitive to your personal needs. A good clinician is able to ascertain when personal psychotherapy is connected to sexual and or addictions therapy.
If you are seeking help for a problem in the sexual sphere here are a few things to keep in mind:
Seeking help for sexual problems requires a clinician with a full repertoire of skills and treatment modalities that range from behavior- modification sexual therapy to psychoanalytical sexual therapy for more difficult to treat problems. Addiction therapy skills and expertise are also valuable in rounding out the clinical picture because many sexual problems stem from families with addictions. The type of sexual difficulty determines the treatment modality. For example, a man who has difficulty developing and/or maintaining an erection (erectile dysfunction, E.D.) due to lifestyle issues may require a behavior modification sexual therapy approach. This problem may be due to environmental issues, which create performance anxiety. However, this same man may also have more entrenched deep- seated difficulties that show up as symptoms of E.D. His problem with erections may not be the “whole story.” He may be bored and disinterested in sex, in general, or with a specific partner. Problems with desire require a more intense treatment approach. Many clinicians that practice sexual therapy are only trained in a short-range clinical focus—that is, behavior modification and cognitive therapy. These techniques are excellent when the reasons for the sexual difficulties are surface- oriented. Psychoanalytic psychotherapists are skilled clinicians trained in dual treatment to deal with the personality deficits and conflicts that underlie the sexual difficulty. The RIGHT clinician is the one with training in both treatment modalities, not one or the other. My training is in both areas, for individuals and couples.