Services
I am an out of network provider in my private practice but I am available to provide superbill at the end of the month and I am ready to talk about sliding scale fees.
I also work with Growing Minds Counseling (only online sessions). I accept Kaiser and Anthem working with Growing Minds Counseling (update: 12/01/2024).
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, and Phobias
Do you feel anxiety in specific situations and want to avoid them?
Do you have distressing and intrusive thoughts and you don’t know where they come from? Do you feel the irresistible need to repeat a behavior (even mental) over and over to reduce the distress related to these thoughts? If these questions sound familiar to you, you may have anxiety and/or OCD.
Anxiety is an emotion with a specific goal: helping us to survive, and preventing dangerous situations. I love defining anxiety as the cognitive (thoughts and images) and the physiological expression (body feelings) of the fight-or-flight system. However, the fight-or-flight system is over-activated in some people, letting them see dangerous situations where there are none.
If you have arrived here, you are looking for a solution and it is called Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). ERP is a behavioral technique that is used in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). The logic behind ERP is extremely easy to understand: facing what makes you anxious in the present, getting used to the related distress, feeling anxiety-free in the long term, and recalibrating the fight-or-flight system.
My professional experience: I graduated from a CBT school and I have been working with OCD and anxiety disorders using ERP for 10 years. I worked for six years at the Renewed Freedom Center which is a well-known specialized center for OCD and anxiety treatment in LA and in the US.
PTSD
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a disorder that develops when a person experiences or witnesses a dangerous and/or life-threatening life event.
Symptoms may include cognitive (flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive memories about the events, memory problems) and physiological symptoms (severe anxiety and distress; being startled; problems in sleeping).
The person tries to avoid thinking or talking about the traumatic event and avoid places, activities, or people that could be related to it. Drinking or using other substances can be used as maladaptive coping skills.
The mood is also affected and the person develops hopelessness and negative thoughts about themselves, other people, or the world. In severe cases, there is risk of suicide.
How to treat PTSD? Prolonged Exposure (PE) is a manualized exposure-based intervention to treat PTSD following trauma.
PE guides patients to be gradually exposed to trauma-related memories, feelings, and situations that they have been avoiding since their trauma.
My professional experience: I have been working with PTSD since 2020 using PE. I have been supervised by a specialized psychologist (Dr. Lynch) and attended two workshops in 2024 (“Trauma-Related OCD: Exposure Therapy for Co-Occurring OCD and PTSD” and “Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE): An Educational Overview of the Best Practice Treatment for PTSD” ).
Do you like this picture? Google it: Lago di Pilato
Depression
The depression has three main components:
Cognitive: the person has difficulties in thinking, concentrating, remembering and memorizing things, and making decisions. Thoughts of death and suicidal ideation can also be present.
Physiological: insomnia or hypersomnia; tiredness and lack of energy; lack or increase of appetite; anxiety and/or agitation;
Mood: loss of interest in normal activities; feelings of sadness and hopelessness; irritability.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is considered an effective way to treat depression. In particular, the combination of behavioral activation and cognitive restructuring helps to alleviate the physiological, cognitive, and mood symptoms in the short-medium term.
My professional experience: I have been working with depressed patients for the last 10 years. The depression can be the primary diagnosis or the secondary (provoked by the avoidances and the behaviors anxiety and OCD related).
