Dharma-Therapy

I hold personal meetings with individuals and couples – sessions of support, counseling and empowerment in what I call Dharma-Therapy: emotional and process work, integrating Buddhist and Western psychology.

Much experience in practical and spiritual counseling for people at critical junctures in their lives, working with addictions, anxiety, depression, despair, anger, and relationship challenges, as well as support with coming out process and the formulation of sexual identity and gender.

Do I live the life I want to live? The life I deserve to live? The life that it's worth getting out of bed for in the morning? 

The life-race is demanding and unrelenting. Many of us feel at times emotional instability, anxiety, depression, despair, loneliness, emptiness and various forms of stress and distress, expressed in difficulties in interpersonal relationships, in eating disorders, in self-harm, in outbursts of uncontrolled anger, in addictions, in obsessive behaviors and more.

The personal meetings with me are the joint creation of the person/couple and mine. In the meetings we emphasize the abilities, strength, inner resources and beauty inherent in us, not the weaknesses and shortcomings; we identify, reveal and cultivate our inner goodness and self empowerment.

The meetings help to find and strengthen internal forces such as vitality, self confidence, creativity, compassion for self and inner wisdom. They bring healing, growth and freedom, while containing the seeming contradictions between radical self-acceptance and inner need for change, as the famous saying:
"Life is perfect as it is, now go and make a difference".

It is a shared journey of inquiring into the possibility of putting an end to suffering, as the Buddha put it.

The tools and the way:

Mindfulness, radical acceptance, non-judgmental investigation of thought patterns and limiting beliefs, identifying and understanding the relationship between thoughts feelings (which comes first and what affects what) and between emotions and behaviors; compassionate discernment between interpretations and reality, and between needs and strategies; enrichment of the inner repertoire of responses, and creating choices in "stuck" and automatic areas; shedding light on dark and painful places and bringing healing in an empathic, containing and respecting space; identifying needs while validating and accepting them, such as the need to belong , to feel safe and understood; integration of the cognitive system and regulation of the emotional system; finding my "place" in the world, "standing behind" (taking ownership of) the quality of my life and the choices I've made in my life.

Experience and professional training:

Buddhist psychology, CBT-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Schema Therapy, NVC (Non Violent Communication), Imago therapy, 12-step programs, EFT method of emotional release, Rebirthing, working with the inner child and more.