What I Do

I work with individuals, couples, and families around issues relating to anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and relationship challenges. By looking at patterns of functioning from a broader family systems perspective, clients can gain greater self awareness and increase the ability to choose more thoughtful, self-affirming ways to respond to life’s challenges within all relationship systems, whether family, work, or socially based. Simply beginning to have a clearer understanding of what one is up against can assist each individual in starting to identify a broader range of personal choices for better managing anxiety and responding to life circumstances more thoughtfully. I also work with organizations to enhance leadership potential or to explore and address the factors that are challenging effective decision making and functioning. The individuals and organizations I have the privilege to work with tend to come from the Greater Princeton or Bucks County areas, but have reached as far as the suburbs of Philadelphia and many of the counties in New Jersey.

My Theoretical Orientation

I work from a perspective based on Bowen Family Systems Theory, a natural systems theory that looks at the interconnectedness of all individuals within any relationship system. The broader perspective gives clients the ability to understand the bigger picture of factors influencing their lives and the choices available to them. My work involves looking first at a client’s family of origin to try and understand the individual within the broader context of how he or she functions within that primary relationship system. With greater awareness of these facts and patterns of emotional process within the family system, I believe an individual has the ability to make more thoughtful choices about his or her own functioning within all relationship systems--personal or professional. A similar process informs the work I do within an organizational “family” system.