Services:
The primary focus of my psychotherapy practice is on the distinct and unique needs and challenges of individuals who have struggled with depression and anxiety in their lives and are wanting help to substantially uproot these wild moods.
Length of sessions:
Sessions are 50 minutes long. In some cases, depending on your needs, we can arrange to meet for longer sessions, or for multiple sessions during the week, if we decide together that that would be important and helpful.
Frequency of therapy:
We will be meeting weekly, or more frequently if we decide that would be helpful. Although it might seem that less regular sessions would be sufficient, what I have seen over the years is that meeting less than weekly makes it very difficult for you to feel that you’re making progress, that you have a solid foundation under you, and therefore to feel a sense of safety in doing the hard work of therapy.
Length of therapy:
The length of our work together will be a question we revisit over time, and depends both on what your goals are, as well as how deep the “roots” of the depression and anxiety go. Therapy, paradoxically, is most efficient when we allow it to happen, rather than try to make it happen; healing is defined by the uniqueness of one’s struggle, not by our own ideas about timeline. That said, it is true that in our working together, we will be able to see fairly soon how deep of a change is required for your healing, and then have a general sense of how long it is likely to take. Therapy does take time, but does not take forever, so we will keep an eye on your goals, assess how close to them you are, and then celebrate when they have been met.
Office Location:
My office is located in the Inner Richmond district of San Francisco, near Park Presidio and Geary in the Inner Richmond district (click here for map).
Parking is free and plentiful throughout the day, and the office is easily accessible from both North and South Bay (along 19th Ave. and Park Presidio), as well as several public bus lines.
Payment:
I accept payment in the form of cash, checks, major credit cards, electronic funds transfer (via bank, Venmo and or PayPal).
About Insurance:
Many insurance companies will reimburse their members a percentage of the cost of psychotherapy (your company can provide you the exact details), and I am happy to provide documentation/statements that you can submit to your company. I do not, however, bill your company directly.
In my practice, I do not contract with any insurance company panels, or with Medi-Cal/Medicare. As important as these services are, in relation to psychotherapy, they impose great restrictions on how, how often, and in what way we’re allowed to work. My experience has been that instead of therapy being under our control, ours in collaboration, it is essentially dictated by the insurance company. When the focus of therapy is an ongoing anxiety and depression, which by nature requires more time and deeper attention, the insurance companies’ priorities can be quite an unhelpful mismatch with what these wild moods demand for healing.
Also, since insurance companies have a right to review patient information, confidentiality is a real issue, as well as potential impacts on attempts to purchase future coverage. Psychotherapy requires you to feel safe to share and work through whatever needs come up, and knowing that a third party is watching over our shoulders can seriously compromise that.
For those reasons I do not work with insurance companies directly or work on panels, but as I said, if you do choose to bill your company for an “out of network” provider, I am happy to provide you with a statement of services.