FAQ
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What is the cost? My standard fee for a 50 minute individual session is $90. My standard fee for a 50 minute couples’ session is $120.
Where is your office located? I have two locations in Portland, OR, one downtown and one in the Belmont neighborhood: My Belmont office is located at 3430 SE Belmont Avenue. This building also houses the Tao of Tea, a small performance arts theater, and an acupuncture practice. On your first visit you can enter through the large front double doors and take a seat in the lobby--my office is upstairs and I'll come down to meet you at our scheduled time. My downtown office is located at 1033 SW Yamhill #202, across the street from the Multnomah County Library on the north side.
Do you offer a free initial consultation session? Yes, I offer a free 15 minute consultation when I have time available in my schedule. I always offer free consultation through email and over the phone.
How do I schedule an appointment? Email is the best way to contact me for a quick turnaround, I can usually respond within a few hours. My email address is This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . I return all phone messages by the next business day. My phone # is (503) 757-6259. This is a confidential voice-mail. Although mainly a message line, if you catch me at the right time I'll pick up. I will ask you about your decision to seek counseling and we can work out a time to meet. Our meeting time is time that I have set aside especially for you. I ask that you give me 48 hours notice if you need to reschedule. My policy is to bill for missed sessions when I don't receive 48 hour notice.
Do you accept insurance? Not at this time. I'm always happy to provide a receipt and/or a summary of our work together if this is helpful to you.
Did you write the articles on this website? Yes. Thanks to the clients and others who have read them and given their feedback. I hope you find them helpful.
What are your credentials? I'm a Psychologist Resident with a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (Psy.D.) from Pacific University. I have worked as a counselor for 9 years; this is my 3rd year of private practice I've worked with adults of all ages at organizations approved by the American Psychological Association (APA): Portland State University, Central Washington University, Lifeworks NW (Beaverton), Pacific University’s Psychological Service Center (Downtown Portland), and Pacific University’s Counseling Center (Forest Grove). I have specific training and experience in Gestalt, ACT, Emotion-Focused, and Collaborative Couples’ therapies. In addition I have trained in and used effective, holistic, and wellness-based approaches for treating depression and anxiety. Being a counselor is a great job. I enjoy bringing my energy, vitality, and sense of ground into the work I do. If you have any questions about my approach to therapy or my credentials please don’t hesitate to get in touch by phone or email.
Below is a collection of frequently asked questions about specific issues for which people commonly seek counseling. The answers provided are not exhaustive and are intended as starting points for big questions. If you have a question I don't cover here, feel free to email me. I'll respond to your email and I may post the answer to your anonymous question on this site.
Frequently asked questions about the loss of relationships:
Why does it hurt so bad?In a word, attachment. People are social beings and we are wired to give and receive affection. Before you knew your partner your natural ability to give and receive love was free floating. When you fell in love with your partner your need for love became specific to that person—no one else would do. You got used to having your needs met by your partner and began to associate your good feelings with them. This is normal, and your ability to fall in love—to share tender feelings with another person—is a sign of health. When your partner is lost to you, a tear in attachment occurs that leaves many people feeling like they’ve been stranded in cold water far from the warm shore—their source of good feelings is gone and they may feel scared, sad, and hopeless. Recovery from the pain of relationship loss involves learning to re-center the focus of your love within yourself. Rather than swimming endlessly toward shore, you learn to recreate your own shore right under your feet. Once you have taken the time to properly grieve and let go, you will find that your natural ability to give and receive love will return. This will allow you to enter your next relationship without significant unresolved baggage. Why am I having these obsessive thoughts about my ex-partner?The loss of an important relationship is often experienced as a legitimate emotional trauma. Your mind and body react in many ways to protect you from additional harm, just as they would had you experienced another kind of trauma such as crashing your car or witnessing a horrific event. Obsessive thoughts, difficulty sleeping, early awakening, and loss of appetite are all physical symptoms triggered by a flood of stress-induced neurotransmitters in the brain. Your mind and body struggle to maintain a state of constant mental vigilance and physical readiness in the wake of a trauma. Subjectively, you experience this as obsessive thinking, an increased sense of vulnerability, feeling ‘keyed up’, a sensitive startle response, and changes in your eating and sleeping patterns. I’m having some suicidal thoughts, is this normal?Suicidal thoughts can be common during the initial agonizing pain of a difficult breakup or divorce. It is important to remember that these feelings will pass—you are currently at a dip in the road, but the road will not stay low forever. If you are confused or scared because of suicidal thoughts, it is important to remind yourself that you probably don’t really want to die—you probably want to escape this terrible pain and you imagine suicide as a way out. There is a big difference between passing suicidal thoughts and developing a plan with the intent to kill yourself. Suicidal thoughts of any intensity indicate that you are under significant stress and would benefit from as much social support as you can get from your friends, family, and counselor. Serious or persistent suicidal thoughts, especially when accompanied by a suicide plan and intent to die warrant immediate action. Please call 911 or the Multnomah Crisis line at (503) 988-4888 for immediate help if you are feeling acutely suicidal. If you aren’t in Multnomah county, here is a link to a website with numbers for crisis lines in Oregon, and nationwide: http://suicidehotlines.com/oregon.html Why do I keep repeating the same painful pattern in my relationships?There are many reasons, and I’ll explain some of the major ones. People tend to seek out the same patterns in relationships that they experienced in their family of origin. There are several theoretical reasons for this. Here are two of my favorites: 1) People are drawn to try and heal in their relationships any emotional damage they sustained in their families. For example, if you had a distant parent who never quite gave you the love you deserved, you may find yourself drawn to emotionally distant partners. Your (often unconscious) hope is that you will finally be able to get the love you deserve from a familiar-feeling source. Unfortunately, this is often like trying to squeeze a lump of coal into a diamond. 2) During childhood, people learn protective patterns they use to keep themselves safe in the world. We are drawn to people and situations that allow us to use our familiar defenses. Continuing with the example above, even if you know that your parent was distant and that you want more intimacy in your life, the fact is you may feel more comfortable with some distance, because this is a familiar way of interacting for you. It may be less threatening to feel the familiar disappointment of distance than it is to connect with a partner who is emotionally available and who appears to be “luring you” toward the unfamiliar, emotionally vulnerable terrain of intimacy. What can I do to change my patterns in relationships?First, explore your patterns and connect them to your history. Next, clearly identify why you would want to change them. No one ever changes embedded patterns without first weighing their pros and cons and deciding that change will legitimately result in more happiness. This is because change causes anxiety and it takes hard work. If you really want to change your patterns in relationships, here are a few places to start: 1) Recognize that you should focus your energy on changing yourself, not your partners. (If you change yourself you will automatically attract a different kind of partner.) It will be helpful for you to explore in counseling what kinds of people you are typically attracted to and how your relationships typically begin. There are often many warning signs at the onset of a new relationship that people with established patterns do not notice or have trained themselves to ignore. Developing and listening more closely to your internal warning system can give you much more decision-making power in your choice of relationships. 2) Many people bounce from one relationship to the next without ever taking the time to grieve, explore what went wrong, and re-center their energy and love within themselves. If this describes you, your work is to slow down, face your pain and fear, and work through it. It is only when we are standing with both feet on the ground that we can make clear decisions and good choices about who we want to date, love, or partner with.
Frequently asked questions about couples’ therapy:
How can I get my partner to come to couples’ therapy?First, the obvious: Sometimes less is more. Try not to use threats or ultimatums to coerce your partner into couples’ counseling. Try letting them know what it would mean to you to do counseling together. If you are truly about to leave your relationship and see couples’ counseling as a last chance to save the relationship, this may be OK to share with your partner—try to be honest and calm while sharing this kind of information. Connect counseling to positive feelings and outcomes for you and your partner—although it takes hard work, couples’ counseling results in more happiness and understanding for many people—that’s why it’s still around. For any relationship to work, both partners need to put in effort, and attending counseling is usually evidence that an effort is being made. Make sure your partner understands that any competent couples’ counselor will align with both members of the couple equally—neither member will be made to feel like the “bad guy”. Some people are particularly resistant to using couples’ counseling for fear that they will be judged and blamed by the counselor. This should never happen—it is the counselor’s job to support and understand both members equally, and help them to articulate their position so that it can be heard. Sometimes picking a counselor of the same gender as the most reticent partner can encourage them to try couples’ counseling. What will couples’ counseling be like in session?I typically open the first session by asking each member about the decision to use counseling, what their hopes are for counseling, and what their fears are about it. I ask about the history of the relationship—the good times, the hard times, etc., and assess for family and relationship patterns in your background. I will make time in each session for you to ask questions and check in with me about how counseling is going. If we need to shift our focus, we will. As counseling progresses I help each member give concrete, recent examples of times when things were going poorly or going well in the relationship. I help members articulate what they wanted in these situations that is different from what actually happened. I help couples talk about how they were feeling in situations and what particular outcomes meant to them. I tend to run a balance between talking individually with each member of the couple and having you talk to each other. The benefit of having each of you talk to me individually is that it gives the other member practice with listening and it breaks up whatever communication pattern has been established in your relationship. It also allows me to help each of you articulate where you are coming from without compromise or interruption. The benefit of having you talk to each other is that often the same patterns will emerge in counseling that you experience in your relationship—but I will be able to help you process what happened instead of shutting down. I will encourage both of you toward unedited honesty and toward articulating your uncompromised, ideal position. The idea here is not that your partner can necessarily meet all your fantasy needs, but that it is much healthier and more freeing to incorporate your dreams and fantasies into your relationship than it is to bury and ignore them.
Frequently asked questions about affairs:How long do affairs last? This is a common question, and a difficult one to answer. There are many different types of affairs and it's tough to generalize how long each will last. Some different kinds of affairs: One night stands, philandering, sexual addiction, exploratory affairs (which attempt to answer, Do I want out of my relationship? What's it like to be with someone else?), sexual identity affairs, tripod affairs (in which a failing relationship is propped up by an affair), retaliatory affairs (cheating because your partner did it first), and exit affairs (using an affair to leverage out of a relationship). Does your partner have a history of sexual addiction? If so, his/her infidelities are likely short-lived, but there may be a history of many partners and he/she may be more likely to cheat in the future. In general, affairs may end more quickly if they are primarily sexual, with little emotional attachment. Often, affairs that are discovered end more quickly than those that aren't. This is because infatuation is not the same as relational love. When the person in an affair is confronted with the possible loss of their primary relationship, this can cause them to reevaluate their position on their affair. What seemed like the 'love of your life' last week may shift to a passing infatuation when the loss of the primary relationship becomes a possibility. The health of the primary relationship is an important factor when it comes to predicting how long a discovered affair will last. Do you and your partner have a history of being close? Do you typically have good communication? Do you like each other? If so, the loss of the relationship to an affair is less likely. There is a misperception that an affair always leads to the end of the primary relationship. Research shows most people stay together and choose to work through it. The function of many affairs is to blast the primary relationship down to its foundations. This can be quite painful, but the end result is often that the couple can begin to talk about unmet emotional and sexual needs in new ways.
Will you judge me or blame me for my affair? No. I will support you toward honesty with yourself and with me about your affair and the circumstances that led you to it. We will work together on the elements of your situation that you find important and I will give you my feedback and point out themes as I see them. I will coach you toward taking responsibility for the choices you make and help you to work on relationship patterns as they come up.
I’m afraid to tell my primary partner about my affair, but I don’t want to keep lying—can you help? I don’t know if I should leave my old relationship or stay, knowing that it will take a lot of hard work before things get better. What to do? Yes, I can help you explore these important decisions. If you had an emotionally and sexually involved affair, it is key to realize that your primary partner has almost certainly noticed a change in your behavior and may be coping by using denial. As you can probably guess, the admission of an affair usually precipitates a crisis in the primary relationship. What happens next is dependent on the level of commitment and love that exists between you and your primary partner. Most marriages that experience affairs do not end in divorce (70% do not), but healing the relationship will be hard work. Relationship counseling is helpful during this time, and couples that use counseling to help mend their relationship after an affair show much higher rates of survival and long-term happiness. The research shows that the partner who strayed must be dedicated to understanding the traumatized response of their partner, and must also work hard to regain trust. After you have worked together through the initial crisis of discovery (which can take 2-6 months) and have adequately processed the intense emotions of betrayal, anger, sorrow, guilt, shame, and resentment that will surface, you can then take the next step toward exploring historical relationship dynamics and patterns of deadness and blocked communication. This can ultimately lead to a relationship that is stronger and more deeply connected than it was prior to the affair. Affairs throw relationships into crisis, but that crisis provides an opportunity for both of you to tear down worn out patterns and replace them with more honesty and intimacy. If you decide to be honest with your partner and stay to work on your relationship you will have your work cut out for you. You will also be choosing a path that could lead you and your partner toward significantly more happiness and connection than you shared before.
How do I cope with my partners extremely hurt/angry/sad response to discovering my affair? This is a very important question. If your partner has recently discovered your affair (or if you admitted it to them) you should know that they are likely to react as people do when they experience a trauma. An affair constitutes a massive betrayal to most people, and it can cause them to reassess their view of you, the relationship, and their perspective on the world in general. A typical reaction may include shock, anger, sorrow, sadness, loss of sleep, changes in appetite, obsessive thoughts about the affair, a pressing reoccurring need to have questions answered (Why? How could you? Where? When?), a feeling of vulnerability, and a need to know your whereabouts and your communications with others through phone, email, etc. It is important that your partner be allowed and encouraged to feel and express what comes up for them. If you are invested in mending your relationship it will be important for you to support your partner and try to understand their response. Couples counseling is essential during this time—the couple will greatly benefit from a neutral supportive party who can coach them through the stages that follow discovery. Getting past the initial crisis is the first step, and examining the underlying relationship and personal dynamics that led to the affair can only happen afterward.
What are some reasons people have affairs? People have affairs for many reasons, and some people have affairs even though they are in perfectly happy relationships. Most people, however, have affairs to try and meet needs that are no longer being met in their primary relationship. Because honest communication is shut down in their relationship (or may never have existed in the first place) they did not have the tools to talk with their partner about what was going on—which ultimately blocked the couple from making changes in the relationship to meet unmet needs. There are many kinds of affairs (short-term, long-term, emotional, sexual, one night stands, etc.) but the common modern affair is both emotional and sexual. Most people do not go looking for an affair—they tend to slide into it after becoming friends with someone at work or in the social circle. After a time, an emotional connection develops which starts to include intimate sharing. Boundaries become blurred, and are then crossed. Once people have crossed their normal boundaries of emotional and sexual intimacy, it is very difficult to reestablish them. Here are some specific reasons people cite for having affairs:
(c) 2008 Great Northwest Counseling, Portland, OR
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