Online in California, Hawaii, and Indiana
Therapy That Works with You.
I'll Listen.
Couples, Individual, and Teen Therapy
Get StartedCouples, Individual, and Teen Therapy
Get StartedYou love this person, and you can’t talk to them. Not about anything that matters.
It keeps turning into a fight neither of you wanted.
By the time your partner finishes a sentence, you’ve already decided what they meant by it. They did the same thing to you two sentences back. Nobody in the room is listening. Both of you are defending.
Nobody signed up for this. You merged your lives because you wanted your forever person, and now every day starts where the last fight left off.
Most of the couples who email me have tried this already. Couples therapy that went nowhere,
Sometimes, one of you is depressed, and the whole relationship starts revolving around it. Sometimes, there’s no diagnosis at all, and the two of you simply can’t talk a problem through to the end.
Therapy for couples helps you speak and be heard. That’s the entire job. What you get for it is a conversation that doesn’t go sideways, and a Friday night out with each other you both want again.
Imagine a team that can negotiate with each other. Real partners getting a great outcome! Most couples get there in about six months. Premarital counts, too. Premarital counseling is counseling before you identify you have a problem.
You describe the thing that made you unhappy, then how it made you feel. Then what you’d like instead, and what’s in it for your partner. Then you stay willing to meet in the middle. I can’t take a side, and I’ll tell you both that on day one.
One date night a week. Two hours, the same things you did when you first met, and no negative talk. Save that for your best friend. One management meeting a week, without me. Complaints, budget, logistics, whose family at the holidays. You’re running a company of the two of you, and no company runs without a management meeting.
And never ambush anybody at bedtime. The person who does the ambushing goes to sleep. The one who got ambushed is awake all night.
You haven’t slept right in a while. You wake up at some point and turn over and over until the alarm.
Then work. You’re scared you’ll make the small mistake again, the one you always make, and this time your boss fires you, and how do you pay the bills?
You’re irritable out of proportion to what happened. Motivation is gone. The things you used to love don’t give anything back.
There’s a sentence under all of it you don’t say out loud. You can’t get anything right anymore. What you want is to be capable and for other people to see that you are.
Through high school it worked. You studied, the A came back, and you walked away from it.
Then it stopped. You studied and the grade didn’t come.
Two years of doing the work, and the promotion went to somebody else. Or the software job you were good at ended in a layoff, and months of applications later, nothing.
There was nobody to ask, so you reached a conclusion privately. You must be the problem. It’s the wrong conclusion, and the most common one.
Individual work is more complicated, and it runs longer, because you go back into the same environment every week.
First, you find out what’s going on, and why what you’ve been doing hasn’t worked. Therapy educates.
Then skills. Practical ones, rehearsed until the new response is the automatic one.
You don’t have to understand where your anxiety came from to stop being run by it. Practicing the skill until it’s automatic is what changes your week.
It almost seems like there’s a new one every day. And so powerful.
Transitioning from elementary to middle and high school, struggling to acquire independence, and yet not truly an adult can cause unbelievable mood swings.
And let’s not forget puberty. So much sudden growth, changes in hormones, new roles, and much more. It’s almost as if they’re learning how to fit into an entirely new world. No wonder they struggle simply to understand – let alone express or control – their feelings.
Teenagers can use what I teach. They have the maturity to learn a skill, argue with me about it, and go try it out.
The work belongs to your teenager. What gets said in a session stays in the session, apart from danger, and I tell every parent that before the first appointment.
Some parents don’t want it that way. I’d rather know on day one than three months in.
Therapy gives you a clear name for what's happening to you, in words you'd say out loud. And it tells you the true thing, which is that you're not the only one.
Once it's working you don't stop cold. Weekly becomes every other week, then monthly. You'll show up with fewer problems and more solutions, then with less to say. That's the finish line, and I'll tell you when I see it.
That’s the right way around. You should want to know who you’re emailing before you email him.
My name is Stephen. Most clients end up calling me Doc.
I have a doctorate in clinical psychology, trained at the California School of Professional Psychology in an APA-accredited program. Licensed psychologist, California first, and licensed in several states besides.
Decades of work in developmental centers, prisons, state hospitals, and outpatient clinics. Four years ago I left government service for my own practice. Underneath all those settings, the same handful of problems wearing different clothes.
There have been times when I needed a friendly, knowledgeable voice myself.
Fighting with my wife, I understand. A breakup is devastating and I know it. Depression, the dark nights, feeling isolated: those I know, too.
Others helped me. I want to pass that help on.
One promise before you write to me. The biggest complaint I hear about therapists on these platforms is that they kept canceling. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I’m in that appointment.
Learn More About MeYou’ve been using it on people who decided what you meant before you finished. Use it on somebody whose whole job is hearing the end of your sentence.
Send me an email. Tell me what’s going on, in whatever words you’ve got. Ask how I can help you.
If you’d rather talk first, say so. The consultation is free, by video or phone.
