You have the right to receive a “Good Faith Estimate” explaining how much your medical and mental health care will cost. Under the law, health care providers need to give patients who don’t have insurance or who are not using insurance an estimate of the expected charges for medical services, including psychotherapy services. You have […]
Creating a Sense of Calm in an Unpredictable Time
Making sense of living in a pandemic requires reckoning with issues personal and existential. How can you not be fearful in a time where so little is known? Most people cannot avoid feeling the fear, and having fear is fitting for these times. What I would wish for you is to be able to feel […]
Consulting and Presentations
In topics ranging from compassion fatigue to post traumatic growth and resilience, Ms. Dear offers consultations and presentations. Her presentation style is dynamic and interactive, and she puts people at ease to facilitate their learning and interactions with each other. She believes strongly in the value of collaborative learning, and enjoys tailoring her consultations to […]
Eating Disorders
Food is one of the earliest ways we humans experience nurturance and interaction with a caring adult. Due to these early associations, food takes on many meanings about relationships, needs, control, and the value of self. The development of an eating disorder signals a problem in one or several of these areas; the eating disorder […]
LGBTIQ Health
Being lesbian, bisexual, transgender, gay, intersex, or queer (or questioning) brings unique challenges in the often prejudiced and intolerant mainstream American culture. Although in the big picture we need cultural change, many people need help holding onto or exploring their sexual orientation, examining internalized homophobia, managing external discrimination, or negotiating decisions about whether, when, or […]
Family and Couples Therapy
Many people are hesitant to enter therapy with their loved ones due to the belief that people who love one another should be able to solve their own problems. It is not the lack of love that leads to problems; it is usually the lack of distance from a problem. When you can clearly see […]
Supervision of Interns
One part of my work that I treasure is supervising interns as they work toward their licenses as Marriage and Family Therapists or Professional Counselors. I welcome different theoretical orientations in my interns, since I trust that therapists need to work within a frame they respect and that fits their values and personalities. (Despite the […]
Working with Children: Play Therapy
For children, the primary way to communicate feelings and thoughts is through play. Play therapy allows children to express themselves freely without needing the words for complex and sometimes seemingly contradictory feelings. I primarily work with children who are experiencing loss (death, divorce, chronic illness, moving), who need help recovering from trauma, and who need […]
Loss and Grief
So much that causes disruption in our lives is due to loss of one kind or another. Finding the ground on which to stand to be able to endure and accept loss is one of life’s most difficult challenges. In our busy modern lives, losses often accumulate because we are too busy to allow in […]
Trauma
Some people think their experiences don’t count as trauma because there was no blunt force or they compare what they went through with what they have heard from others. My belief, which is supported by others in the field of trauma treatment, is that anything that causes significant doubt about one’s view of self or […]