Men's Issues Therapists in West Central, Pasadena, CA

Author and psychologist Alice Miller once wrote, “Consciously experiencing our legitimate emotions is liberating. Repressed emotion can be resolved as soon as it is felt, understood, and recognized as legitimate.” Dr. Miller’s words capture my work as a psychotherapist. It is my hope to help my patients legitimately experience their complex emotional worlds in order to cultivate a rich and meaningful life. Although this is no easy task, I offer my partnership on this journey toward relief and healing, both internally and interpersonally.

Welcome to my practice. I have about 15 years of clinical experience and have been featured on NBC/KCAL/HLN as an expert psychologist. I work primarily with men who have hit “rock bottom” and would like help getting up. These men are often in crisis when we first meet. The issues I address are typically related to unhealthy sexual behaviors, infidelity, financial recklessness, gambling, drugs/alcohol, dishonesty/lying, and relational conflicts. My therapy approach is a combination of psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioral, and the 12-Step recovery model. I also share insight from my own painful but redemptive recovery journey.

I've been helping clients for over 25 years and my love is helping people find healthy relationships, whether it is with a spouse, friend, employer or potential intimate relationship. I'm a Marriage Family Therapist and I work with many kinds of issues including how to identify and separate from toxic situations, how to heal relationships, and symptoms of depression, anxiety and anger. I will always ask you about your relationship with yourself. Are you taking care of yourself?

What's wrong with me? I should have this figured out by now! But no matter what you tell yourself, you can't break free from the stress that's draining you. It pulls your energy in every direction, never caring that there’s only one of you. Meanwhile, your mind is radio-fixed on what could go wrong if you make a mistake, your anxiety growing. You need a break. Time to spend with those you love, where you can catch your breath. Peace to make confident decisions, finally getting ahead at work. The ability to turn down the background noise of your mind, embracing both rest and accomplishment. But how do you get from here to there?

I help individuals and couples understand and overcome barriers that get in the way of living a meaningful and fulfilling life; this can include professional, emotional, or interpersonal challenges. My approach draws on narrative and cognitive based principles, that value the understanding of how our experiences, self-awareness, and relationships impact how we cope with life. I believe the process of therapy is one that encourages collaboration and curiosity, and in doing so creates a hospitable environment to explore a variety of life experiences and achieve a healthy life balance.

I work primarily with men, teens, and their families. Those I work with often feel stuck in some way, whether that is stuck in a job, or in depression, or with anxiety, or negative patterns in relationships. It is a privilege to walk alongside those who come into my office, to learn their stories, their strengths, and their struggles, and to give them a safe place to learn about themselves and move toward growth and thriving.

Life losses its zeal when we become disconnected from ourselves, others, and our surroundings. It becomes even more difficult when there is a desire for change, but we just don’t know how to get what we desire most. Whether it be to learn how to smile again as we deal with our day-to-day activities, enjoy a simple walk without being bombarded with worries, deal with mishaps without going into a rage, or being able to talk to those that we love even after they wear on our nerves. That emotional burden, pain and/or fatigue can be sometimes too much to bear, whether someone be a teenager, young adult, elder adult, man, or women.

I believe that we all have the resources within us to heal, and yet sometimes we need a little help. The right connection between a therapist/client can help start that healing. Maybe your teenager is sullen and isolated. Maybe you are in love and scared to be truly seen by another. Maybe there’s an angry side of you that your family doesn’t understand and a vulnerable side that is too scary to feel. Together we can work on acceptance, healthy coping skills, and letting go of bad habits. Without judgment, we will build an understanding of who you are as a person so as to realize your strengths and fortify them.

"How we do anything is how we do everything." We move through life in a distinct way that was shaped before we can remember, reinforces itself everyday, and inevitably leads to the same problems despite our best efforts to change. Do anxiety and depression color your everyday experience? Has addiction taken hold of your life? Do you struggle to build satisfying relationships? Through courageous self-exploration, I can help you find compassion for yourself and come to understand why you encounter the same issues again and again. Building this understanding and taking responsibility for your life can empower you to heal and grow.

When considering our experiences in the human tribe, the process of discovering or rediscovering our truest self can be a journey laden with challenges and difficulty. However, it is often when we believe that we have attempted everything we can or know how to do to make difficult transformations, to cease our suffering, and to change unhelpful patterns, that we may find ourselves poised for growth and evolution.

My therapeutic approach mainly focuses on helping my clients identify their strengths to help alleviate anxiety, depression, and trauma. I am a firm believer that our childhood experiences contribute to our beliefs, behavioral patterns, and selecting a romantic partner. Therapy is a process! To allow ourselves to be intimate and vulnerable with someone about our experiences and trauma can be daunting. As a therapist, it is my goal to help validate, create a safe environment and help understand aspects of lived experiences.

Do you have intense feelings that sometimes others are unable to understand? Maybe you feel alone, unlovable, or hopeless? You are not alone. You are loved. There is hope. I have helped many clients like you move past the hurt and pain, find the inner strength to build happy and successful lives. As your therapist, my goal is make therapy feel easy and comfortable. I am best known for being authentic, genuine, and resourceful. Therapy with me is collaborative, where I will work together with you to discover your greatest potential.

Do you have concerns about your child's behavior or development? Do you need help with parenting strategies for challenging behaviors? Or do you just want to improve your relationship with your child? I can help you better understand your child's behavior and help you meet his or her needs. I have been working with children with special needs for over 20 years. When it comes to children, I believe that all children are special, and therefore have "special" needs.

My clients are sophisticated, insightful, and curious about themselves and others. Yet they may have found themselves feeling chronically depressed, anxious, or lost in life, and they might struggle with long-term patterns in their lives and relationships that they just can’t seem to change. Perhaps they have struggled with trauma or other experiences, thoughts, and feelings they fear nobody would understand. I enjoy working with people who desire not just new insights into their mind, but also a new way of experiencing themselves and others.

Everyone can benefit from hypnosis. Whether you need to beat a habit, reduce anxiety or start performing at your best, Hypnotic Healing can help. Having studied a variety of Hypnotherapy, NLP, EFT, and Transformational Life Coaching methods, I will have you seeing major improvements in no time.

I know it stretches you to take on difficult issues in your life, and you need to be met with compassion and acceptance. I offer the safety to process and work through painful experiences so that they don't become wounds that you constantly react to in other unrelated relationships onward. Together we work to understand you, your painful experiences, and how your brain makes sense of them. Because when you "graduate" from therapy I want you to enter your world of interactions effectively and fluidly.

Do you have a hard time saying no? Feel emotionally drained, insecure, or stuck in people-pleasing? Does conflict feel uncomfortable or scary? Do you fall into patterns in relationships, friendships, or work and wish you could break the cycle? Sometimes, it isn't obvious why we do the things we do, but we can sense we're not our most authentic or successful self. And even when we know the cause of our distress, changing our behavior can still be hard. That's where I come in. My job is to listen without judgment, pressure, or bias and help you examine the root causes of your challenges to create the change you want in your life.

Are you working in a high stress industry? Do you feel like a fraud despite all of your accomplishments? Have you been hiding from your pain through professional achievement? Are you afraid you will lose everything if you make one wrong decision? Maybe you feel guilty if you take time off and are not being "productive". Do you feel alienated from others in your life? Do you often respond with anger? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, I may be able to help. We can all benefit from learning better strategies for coping with the stressors that arise in our lives and improving how we relate to ourselves and others.

If you're seeking help for your relationship with your partner, considering making a long-term commitment, struggling to reignite the "spark" you once had, or feeling desperate to stop the constant arguments, I would like to help you get your relationship back on the right track! Many couples wait too long to seek out professional relationship help, and suffer the pain and sadness of being out-of-sync with their partner for far too long. Unfortunately, when the commitment level has bottomed out, relationships often pass the point of no return and simply cannot be salvaged. Don't wait until it's too late!