Client after client laments about the grueling nature of dating in middle age. Dating can be a complex and challenging experience and even more so if it has been a few decades since you last dated. Finding a match to date is exceedingly time consuming and self-esteem blasting.

After working with countless singles, I have honed some expertise in cracking the code to making dating more enjoyable and to finding the right person. As a psychologist who also acts as a dating coach I bring a depth of understanding to the dating process, allowing for a more holistic and effective approach.

Learning About Yourself

To make the most of the time spent finding partner potentials to date, you must be as invested in learning about yourself as learning about others through every stage of the dating process, from creating a profile to deciding if you want to continue seeing other people, once you have found someone who feels like a true match.

If you are beginning to date again after a signi...

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude

Friendship is one of life's most important components.

We long for closeness and connection.

Our longing is part of what it means to be human and to be social creatures.

Having a few close friends translates into better physical and mental health, greater well being, and living longer.  Satisfaction with our friends is a better predictor of life satisfaction than number of friends and contact with adult children. Friendship quality ...

To live fully we must commit to truly knowing ourselves. It's not difficult to remain aware of the parts of ourselves we feel good about but that results in knowing a mere fraction of ourselves. Truly knowing ourselves follows our willingness to come to know the parts of ourselves we have stowed deeply away and our commitment to reintegrating those shadow parts into the conscience Self. 

Harnessing our Wholeness

Integrating and accepting our shadow parts into the self is a powerful step toward harnessing our wholeness, an essential stepping stone toward self love and transformational healing.

Deeper self-awareness arises when we shine a light upon our shadow self and courageously observe and account for what and who we find within our depths. 

What Are Our Shadow Qualities?

Shadow qualities are characteristics of ourselves or behaviors that we have come to disown or reject.

 

How do aspects of ourselves become shadow parts?

In childhood, we may have been ignored, b...

Therapeutic Coaching

What is therapeutic coaching?

Therapeutic coaching integrates two models for healing:

1. Traditional psychotherapy
2. Solution-focused coaching

In Therapeutic Coaching we learn how to heal the wounds from our past, how to live in the present, and also how to create the future that we want.

What can be missing from psychotherapy?

Traditional psycho-therapeutic approaches may primarily focus on our history without giving us the tools to help us live well in the present or create changes to facilitate a bright future.

What is missing from traditional coaching?

Coaching can be very focused on your future without understanding or accounting for the traumas and the impacts of the past. Coaching may emphasize mindfulness without understanding part of what holds us back from being present and mindful are impacts of the past. 

Therapeutic coaching includes bringing together the best of psychotherapy and solution focused coaching  in a well-clinically-tested app...

Heart-Focused Breathing Technique

Physiological Coherence and Psychophysiological Coherence

When the heart, mind and emotions are in energetic alignment and cooperation we are experiencing physiological coherence. We can actually influence moving into this state of coherence by using our emotions. When we use our emotions to bring the heart, mind, and emotions into energetic alignment and cooperation the resulting state is called Psychophysiological Coherence.

One way to use our emotions to enter a state of psychophysiological coherence is to engage in a heart focused breathing technique.

The Heart-Focused Breathing Technique is easy to do and yet very powerful. Using this technique can help you to relax, feel more balanced or feel more energized.  Practicing heart focused breathing can elevate your energy and emotions. It can help you to feel more fully alive. It helps you to connect with your own heart and in so doing brings receptivity to connecting with the hearts of ...

I was seven years old, it was a lazy afternoon in June and I was walking around the mall with my grandfather and grandmother. I was visiting them in Hollywood, California from my home with my mother and step-father in Dallas, Pennsylvania. I was away from home and yet felt at home.

I felt more at home at my grandparent's 16th floor Hollywood condo than I did at the home where I lived in Pennsylvania. I was in second grade and yet felt like such an important person to my grandma and grandpa. They arranged and scheduled my visits.The visit would be too short for the three of us, and not long enough for my mother and step-father who were relieved to have me out of their home. When I arrived at the Miami Airport and saw them waiting for me I knew they had been truly waiting for me to appear since my last departure the year before. Time with me mattered to them and time with them was precious to me.

The qualities of feeling I mattered and feeling at home made it a safe place for my s...

When I share that I am a psychologist, I sometimes receive looks comparable to the looks I receive when I declare that I live in Arizona and it is the middle of August. What registers is the heat.

"How are you always so upbeat?"

Always? None of us are always anything, and especially not always upbeat.

Being human means experiencing the full spectrum of experiences and emotions. It is wading in that variability and the return to center that is a sign of well-being.

I am asked how I clear the stories and angst that others share with me.

How do I protect myself from the rage, outrage, and heartbreak that others experience and share with me?

Could I possibly really feel the sun softly settling upon my shoulders as I walk to my car after a long day parsing through darkness?

 
First, it is not all darkness that is shared in my office.

My clients process love and learning.

They share miracles of reunion and of finding peace.

They capture trust for new love and sometimes overflow with...