At Villa Psychology, our passion is relationships!
We are determined and dedicated to helping you improve your communications, resolve conflict, and set healthy boundaries.
We offer coaching and therapy using a variety of treatment modalities: Gottman (Couples) Mindfulness skills to better regulate emotional responses, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral (DBT), Psychodynamic and many others.
During the first session, we will talk about what you would like to work on and ways in which we can help you. We will also determine if we are a good match. The first session may be useful if you are not sure whether you need or want therapy or if you are looking for a second opinion. We are happy to help you with this process!
Individual, Couples sessions are typically weekly, however, depending on your needs we may meet twice a week or twice a month. Each session will be tailored to your needs, with a focus on your goals, difficulties impeding your progress, and strengths.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy changes your relationship with yourself through a process of self-examination. The focus is on internal conflicts that you may or may not be aware of or know how to resolve. The goal is to resolve these conflicts through gaining a greater awareness of yourself. Through this process, you will resolve obstacles that interfere with your goals and feel less fearful. Further, you will gain clarity and a deeper understanding of what you feel and want. Awareness will allow you to develop a more empathetic approach to thinking about yourself and, in turn, you will feel more connected to yourself and others and your ability to deal with problems will be more effective.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a problem focused and action oriented therapy that focuses on the relationship between your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The goal is to identify patterns of thinking (i.e., self-judgment, catastrophic thinking, and all or nothing thinking) that lead you to feel unhappy and lead to less effective coping skills (i.e., withdrawal and avoidance) that may interfere with your life. By addressing these patterns, we can work together to develop more constructive ways of thinking that will lead to healthier and more flexible approaches to solving problems. You will feel less overwhelmed and more in control of your life. Further, you will develop specific tools that you can effectively use when life is stressful.
Dialectical-behavioral therapy (DBT) combines cognitive-behavioral techniques and mindful awareness derived from Buddhist traditions. This form of therapy focuses on developing skills to cope with stress, reducing mood swings and distress, and improving relationships with others. Through mindfulness and skills training, you will develop a stable sense of self, learn to regulate your emotions, and effectively interact with others.
Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT) is an evidence based, time-limited treatment for depression and views symptoms of depression to be the result of ineffective interpersonal relationships. The goal of treatment is to decrease symptoms by increasing one’s interpersonal effectiveness thereby developing stronger and more fulfilling relationships in one’s life. Treatment emphasizes current, rather than past relationships, and focuses on various themes such as interpersonal conflicts, role transitions, grief and loss, and social skills.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT) is an evidenced-based approach that focuses on the ways interpersonal interactions with our partner get organized into patterns and cycles. EFT teaches couples to access core emotions and share them with one another effectively, thus restructuring negative patterns into more positive ones. EFT is based on the theory of attachment and how we need others to survive. The goal of this model is to establish a secure attachment bond between partners in a relationship so we can feel strong independently and with our partner.
Psychoanalysis is a method of mental health treatment informed by psychoanalytic theory that emphasizes unconscious mental processes and dynamics, such as anxieties, conflicts, distortions, and repetitions that have formed over a person’s life time that continue to impact and impede the present day emotional and relational functioning of the person in a way that is largely outside of their awareness. As an in-depth intensive treatment, psychoanalysis requires at least three weekly treatment sessions for a number of years with a professional trained in this treatment modality. The person in treatment, in time, moves from the chair to the couch, as the supine position facing away from the psychoanalyst facilitates the freedom of speech and solidifies the focus on inner life -thoughts, feelings, fantasies and dreams- that are emotionally difficult to access and bring up when one sits up facing the psychoanalyst. If interested in pursuing psychoanalysis, an initial consultation period of a month, over four sessions, is needed to determine the goodness of fit, clinical appropriateness and potential benefits of this modality for the person.
This group is for people who want to work on their difficulties in accessing/regulating their emotions, struggle with issues of self-care and self-esteem and experience a manifestation of these personal difficulties in establishing and/or sustaining intimacy, appropriate boundaries and achieving fulfilling relationships. The participants have a chance to express and experience their difficulties in the group, a microcosm of the external world, albeit within an empathic safe space, where these expressions will be contained and worked through together with the group members and the therapist towards increased self awareness and adopting new and rewarding expressions and patterns of being with and relating to others. This is a weekly 60-minute year-long group limited to six participants. If interested in pursuing this group, an hour-long initial consultation is needed to determine the goodness of fit, clinical appropriateness and potential benefits of this modality for the person.
