Therapists in San Francisco, CA
Rebecca A. Ward
Marriage & Family Therapist, MS, MA, LMFT, SEP, PCC
Verified Verified
4 Endorsed
San Francisco, CA 94117 (Online Only)
Regardless of your suffering, there is a way through it and because we each have our own way of processing emotional wounds, I take an individualized approach to help you transform pain into healing. I specialize in addressing trauma and grief. This includes the loss of a loved one, traumatic loss (event-related, developmental), as well as psychological symptoms associated with chronic and terminal illness. Through an integrated approach, my work is about healing the soul and finding light in the darkness despite facing life-threatening conditions afflicting the body, mind, heart, and spirit.
Regardless of your suffering, there is a way through it and because we each have our own way of processing emotional wounds, I take an individualized approach to help you transform pain into healing. I specialize in addressing trauma and grief. This includes the loss of a loved one, traumatic loss (event-related, developmental), as well as psychological symptoms associated with chronic and terminal illness. Through an integrated approach, my work is about healing the soul and finding light in the darkness despite facing life-threatening conditions afflicting the body, mind, heart, and spirit.
Online Therapists
Peter Oppermann
Psychologist, PhD
Verified Verified
Walnut Creek, CA 94596
My main goal is to facilitate your passage through major life transitions from leaving home, marriage, divorce as well as illness and grief.
Feeling restless or easily distracted? Lacking energy, motivation, focus, or direction in life? Spinning your wheels in your career or relationships? Prone to pleasing others at all costs, yet feeling unhappy and misunderstood? Always too busy to stop and smell the flowers? I'd like to help you become more empowered, confident, and satisfied through facing and letting go of your fears, irritating beliefs, guilt, and suffering, so you can learn to communicate more effectively and have healthy relationships. For more than twenty-five years I have provided time-limited and in-depth psychotherapy to individuals, couples and groups.
My main goal is to facilitate your passage through major life transitions from leaving home, marriage, divorce as well as illness and grief.
Feeling restless or easily distracted? Lacking energy, motivation, focus, or direction in life? Spinning your wheels in your career or relationships? Prone to pleasing others at all costs, yet feeling unhappy and misunderstood? Always too busy to stop and smell the flowers? I'd like to help you become more empowered, confident, and satisfied through facing and letting go of your fears, irritating beliefs, guilt, and suffering, so you can learn to communicate more effectively and have healthy relationships. For more than twenty-five years I have provided time-limited and in-depth psychotherapy to individuals, couples and groups.
Madhur-Nain Webster
Marriage & Family Therapist, MEd, LMFT
Verified Verified
Napa, CA 94558
Life is a wild journey. There is so much to navigate through, and many of us do not have a road map. With no directions to guide us, we often get stuck circulating around the same issues. We repeat patterns of thoughts, behaviors, actions. We overanalyze. We shame ourselves. Anything can trigger these cycles: trauma, drama, emotions, a sense of grandiosity…
Life is a wild journey. There is so much to navigate through, and many of us do not have a road map. With no directions to guide us, we often get stuck circulating around the same issues. We repeat patterns of thoughts, behaviors, actions. We overanalyze. We shame ourselves. Anything can trigger these cycles: trauma, drama, emotions, a sense of grandiosity…
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Nearby Chronic Pain Therapists Searches for San Francisco
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- Emeryville
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- Tiburon
Chronic Pain Therapists
How does chronic pain therapy work?
Engaging with a psychotherapist to help treat chronic pain does not mean that one’s pain is all in their head. Therapy for chronic-pain patients has been shown to benefit both the mind and the body, targeting physical symptoms and increasing daily functioning. In other words, for many, addressing their emotional health through therapy affects their physical health. A therapist can help a client challenge unhelpful thoughts about pain and develop new ways to respond to it, such as distraction or calming breathing techniques. Studies have found that therapy can be as effective as surgery for certain cases of chronic pain and many doctors recommend trying psychotherapy in advance of considering invasive surgery.
What are the most effective treatment options for chronic pain?
Stress, anxiety, depression, catastrophizing, ruminating, lack of activity, and social withdrawal all make chronic pain worse. Addressing these issues, research shows, can help people gain control over their pain symptoms. Therapeutic approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy, biofeedback, and mindfulness-based stress reduction, along with greater pain-management education, have been found to help people reduce fear and disability.
Are there new treatments for chronic pain?
Many cases of chronic pain, particularly those involving back pain, remain medically unexplained. But there is evidence that changes in the brain or nervous system are caused by previous physical ailments such as tissue damage; in such cases, the brain may continue to send out pain signals despite the physical cause having healed. To aid patients under these circumstances, a recently developed treatment known as pain reprocessing therapy (PRT) is designed to help the brain “unlearn” this response. A PRT practitioner helps individuals to reduce the “threat value” of their ongoing pain signals until they can reappraise them as less threatening and fear-inducing. They also help an individual to develop new emotional regulation skills.
How long does therapy for chronic pain take?
There is no set timeline for recovery from chronic pain, especially as there may be a range of physical and psychological causes for any individual’s discomfort, but most patients should expect to see a therapist for a number of weeks or months, typically spanning at least 12 sessions. Studies of pain reprocessing therapy found that many individuals’ experience of pain lessened in eight sessions over four weeks.