Outpatient Psychotherapy
Evidence-based treatment. Tailored to you.
Therapy for Adults and Couples
The clinicians at Pasadena Healing employ psychodynamic and emotion-focused principles in individual, couples, and group therapy, although each clinician brings his or her unique approach to clinical work. These treatments emphasize building insight, deepening connection with one’s own emotional world, and letting go of longstanding behavior patterns that harm you and your relationships.
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Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is an accelerated, experiential variation of traditional psychoanalytic therapy. In ISTDP, you and your therapist work together to identify and let go of harmful patterns of emotional avoidance and help you break through to experience repressed and often painful feelings. This process can be quite challenging, and the therapist pays special attention, moment-by-moment, to helping you regulate high anxiety states that arise as the you face your feelings. The result is rapid symptom relief, a reduction in self-defeating behaviors, resolution of past traumatic experiences, and a compassionate understanding of your heart and mind.
The past 20 years has produced a wealth of research demonstrating the effectiveness of ISTDP for a number of conditions, most notably treatment-resistant depression, severe anxiety, somatization disorders, personality disorders, and functional neurological disorders (FND). It is particularly helpful for reducing the incidence of suicide attempts and admission to higher levels of care among depressed patients. Most studies also show that therapeutic gains in ISTDP are maintained long after treatment has concluded. Altogether, ISTDP is a cost-effective approach for addressing serious psychiatric conditions with durable results following treatment. Many patients who complete a course of ISTDP transition their work to LTPP (see below) after achieving rapid symptom relief.
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Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (LTPP) is also a vehicle for resolving the internal conflicts that cause you suffering and hinder authentic and effective living; however, in LTPP this work is done gradually, with an emphasis on exploring your patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving over time. Learning to be wholly you entails working through painful emotions and entrenched life patterns that no longer serve you, which can take time to do thoroughly. The most important part of LTPP is a secure and honest relationship between you and your therapist, which allows for working through complex feelings in relationships and learning to be yourself with others.
A large body of research shows LTPP to be an effective treatment for many mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, personality disorders, somatic/pain conditions, trauma, and chemical dependence. In addition to improvement in the symptoms that bring people to therapy, those who receive LTPP report increased self-understanding, enhanced ability to manage emotions, and improved social relationships. In similar fashion to ISTDP, many people who receive LTPP continue to improve for years even after therapy has concluded.
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Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) for couples seeks to promote healthy attachment and co-regulation of strong emotions by creating new relationship patterns that meet each partner’s needs for understanding, comfort, and intimacy. The EFT model emphasizes working in the here-and-now to uncover the unmet attachment needs that fuel cycles of conflict and disconnection. Partners learn to see each other through the lens of emotion, thereby cultivating compassion for one another and creating new relationship patterns that support the well-being of each individual and the couple.
Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of EFT for helping couples and families break entrenched cycles of conflict and strengthen their relationships. This approach has also shown positive results for helping couples work through infidelity and challenges with forgiveness. Research suggests that positive gains made in EFT tend to remain stable in couples and families over time. Furthermore, EFT is also an evidence-based treatment for individuals struggling with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress.
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EMDR therapy is a type of psychotherapy that helps people who have experienced trauma or other distressing events. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which refers to the technique of moving the eyes back and forth while recalling the traumatic memory. The goal of EMDR is to reduce the emotional impact of the memory and help the person process it in a healthy way.
EMDR therapy has eight phases, which include history taking, preparation, assessment, desensitization, installation, body scan, closure, and reevaluation. EMDR therapy has been shown to be effective for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, and phobias.
Our Commitment To You
We strive to do right by our clients. This means acting with integrity, authenticity, and respect in our relationship with you and everyone we work with. We believe that the trust and safety so necessary for therapy to succeed begins the moment we first make contact, and we are committed to living out these values to create a place of healing.
Our values guide our clinical work as well. No matter the challenges you bring to us, we will take you seriously, listen for understanding, and call it like we see it. Our clinicians draw upon the best available research, consider your unique circumstance and values, and use their best clinical judgment to address the issues you bring forward.
Therapy for Parents and Children
Central to the lives of infants and young children are their primary caregivers, whether that be their biological parents, grandparents, or foster parents. As such, the mental health treatment of young children is most often conducted through dyadic therapy, that is, with the parent and the child. We will select a treatment approach based on your child’s specific needs, your preferences, and my best clinical judgement.
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Parent-Child Interaction Therapy is well-researched treatment developed for children ages 2 to 7 who frequently experience intense emotional outbursts and challenging behaviors. PCIT a is unique treatment approach where parents are coached from behind a one-way mirror using a “bug-in-the-ear” system such as AirPods/headphones, giving them direct practice using therapeutic positive parenting strategies to reduce tantrums, improve parental stress, and enhance the parent-child relationship.
Parents are coached on strategies to improve their child’s ability to regulate their emotions and listen and follow directions. PCIT has been adapted to fit the specific needs of various groups of children. These include, but are not limited to, PCIT CALM Program, which was developed to treat anxiety in young children and PCIT-Toddlers, which focuses on attachment and emotional regulation and teaches foundational listening skills in toddlers as young as 12 months of age.
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Child-Parent Psychotherapy is a dyadic treatment for infants and children who have experienced significant stressors or traumatic events in their young lives. These may include specific events that occurred (e.g., NICU stay, accidents, abuse), chronic stress (e.g., experiencing homelessness), or complex trauma (e.g., growing up in the foster care system, experiencing systematic racism). Trauma is understandably difficult to talk about at any age, let alone speaking about complicated and emotion filled experiences with a very young child.
Through CPP intervention, the parent(s) and clinician work in partnership to develop language (verbal and nonverbal) around how to speak to their child about the stressors and rebuild their child’s sense of safety in the world. In addition to improving the parent-child attachment, CPP has been shown to reduce behavioral problems and reduce maternal stress.
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DIR Floortime is a treatment approach developed for children with various developmental differences, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Down Syndrome, to name a few. The treatment focuses on a child’s developmental level, individual differences (e.g., speech delays, sensory needs or sensitivities, physical abilities), and relationships (e.g., parent-child, sibling, peer) to guide the intervention strategies.
Parents learn ways to support their child in regulating their body and emotions in order to communicate their ideas and needs and socially engage with others in their home and community. DIR Floortime has been found to improve the social-emotional development in children with ASD.
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Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a type of psychotherapy that helps children and adolescents who have experienced traumatic events, such as abuse, violence, or loss. TF-CBT involves working with a therapist and a non-offending parent or caregiver to process the trauma and cope with its effects. TF-CBT has three main components: cognitive, behavioral, and trauma narrative.
The cognitive component helps the child identify and challenge negative thoughts and beliefs related to the trauma. The behavioral component teaches the child skills to manage stress, emotions, and behaviors. The trauma narrative component helps the child create and share a detailed account of the traumatic event, as well as its meaning and impact. TF-CBT has been shown to reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety in children and adolescents who have experienced trauma.