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My approach typically starts off with a brief, complimentary, no fee, initial visit. I call it a "Meet and Greet". It is intended to help you decide if you feel comfortable with me, and allows me to consider if someone else would be in a better position to help you. I also take a considerable amount of time during this initial meeting to inform you of your rights and privileges as a patient including your right to confidentiality. Once we both agree to proceed with therapy and we have both signed an Informed Consent for Treatment and other counselor-patient agreements, you then become a client, establish your account, and we can proceed.

The first step usually includes one or two sessions in which you describe the problems you are having that prompted you to seek support and you tell me about your background. This usually includes you completing a detailed checklist of your medical, family, social, educational and career history, from early childhood to the present, which helps me make a preliminary diagnosis.

The preliminary is usually followed by a series of psychological tests. Testing in psychology is in diagnosis many ways like blood testing in medicine. The results from both help confirm, support or reject a preliminary diagnosis. I never base a diagnosis on tests results. Your clinical history as gathered in our initial interviews serves as the basis of our diagnosis.

Once we are both confident and comfortable with our diagnosis, we can determine if we should proceed to therapy, counseling or coaching, and if so, how often we should meet and for how much time per session. This step will also include our defining definite goals and objectives as well as specific ways, techniques, procedures and tests that we will use to measure progress and to determine when we have met our goals and objectives. Most people expect that their problems can be resolved in about four sessions. This is a common misperception. You need to know in advance, before we start, that coaching, counseling and therapy is typically a long-term process, substantially longer than four sessions. Neither, however, must the duration of treatment, counseling or coaching be indefinite. Once I have a better understanding of your needs, we can set goals together and specify time lines.

It is important to note that many problems people experience in life are what many psychologists refer to as “situational”. These may be very stressful or depressing and can disrupt your relationships severely, but were, for the most part, unavoidable and are still, for the most part, just temporary. Sometimes they will even go away by themselves without therapy or counseling, but in many instances, counseling and therapy can help resolve these problems faster and show you ways to better cope with them until they are resolved. One of the first things I try to help a patient determine is whether their problems are situational or whether they are more clinically-based. Clinically based problems typically have been established over the long-term, or are a result of more severe experiences and often require a longer period of time to resolve. In some instances, I cannot deny that the possibility exists that in some cases, they may not ever be resolved to a level of satisfaction. In these cases, my role ends up focusing on helping you cope as best you can.

Some of the most severe of these long-term, clinically based behavioral challenges are often diagnosed as Personality Disorders. Although few people actually have full-blown personality disorders, comparatively, many more have what I call “Personality Disorder Tendencies”, and where both can be challenging to tackle, the prognosis for helping people with “tendencies” is usually more optimistic and of great personal interest to me.

My approach to behavioral health is best summarized by the name of my professional corporation, “Live More Simply”. All our lives, at one time or another, tend to get out-of-hand. From a medical view as well as a psychological view, stress is the “bad guy”. Stress can reduce our immune systems. It can make us more susceptible to minor illness and can even, in some cases, eventually cause our bodies to fail. While we are suffering medically, we also suffer the effects of stress on our relationships, our personal goals and worst of all on our self-confidence and self-esteem. My approach to supporting patients is to do my best to help them reduce stress and build self-esteem. It is simply stated, and sometimes easy to achieve, but other times it takes hard work on both your part as well as mine. I am willing to “stick with it” as long as you are willing to “work at it”.

Click on “Appointments” to schedule a Free, Complimentary, Initial, Get-Acquainted Meet and Greet.

The Doctor-Patient Relationship

The information on www.livemoresimply.com is for general information or educational purposes only and can in no way substitute for clinical and/or healthcare services. Visiting this website or contacting me by email, text or telephone does not constitute or establish a professional or therapeutic relationship. This can only be completed in my office and after you have completed all the necessary documents and met with me in person. Neither are Meet & Greets clinical sessions. I can not provide any clinical advise or consul during a Meet & Greet.

If You Are Experiencing An Emergency

I am not medically trained and the limitations of my licensing require me to inform you that in an emergency -- medical, psychiatric, psychological, safety, health, welfare and/or others -- you must contact your medical doctors and/or 911 and/or the proper government authority. You should also always consider going directly to a hospital emergency room or psychiatric hospital, or calling a suicide help line like Contact Dallas at 972-233-2233. There is a list of alternatives emergency contact numbers and locations on this website at http://www.livemoresimply.com/Who_to_call_for_emergency.htm

If You Need Medication, You Must Contact A Medical Doctor

I am not licensed or qualified to prescribe medication. I feel comfortable making suggestions to a patient’s psychiatrist or family doctor with the patient’s permission, and I will always take an active interest is what medications you take and at what dose. My treatment will not be complete without doing this. You need to clear any changes in your meds, however, with your medical doctors in advance.

This is especially true in considering whether to stop medication abruptly, or whether to decrease or increase a dosage, as opposed to phasing out a medication, or to changing a dosage slowly over time. Abrupt changes to meds can be very dangerous and I strongly advise patients to never stop taking their medication as directed until discussing the implications with their physician in person, and until then, it is very important that patients remain on whatever medications currently prescribed.

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