Treatment Consultation

I provide treatment consultations to help therapists and their patients get their treatment back on track by facilitating a process in which both participants change in some meaningful way. And when that is not possible, I support the respectful and ethical ending of the therapy and offer recommendations regarding future treatment.

It is not uncommon for a therapist and a patient to encounter difficulties and have painful experiences with each other when working together. In fact, ruptures and enactments of various kinds within a treatment can result in greater understanding, growth, and healing when navigated successfully. In some cases, they may even be necessary in order for the therapy to fully engage what the patient sought treatment to address. 

However, such difficulties sometimes become intractable, resulting in a worsening course that may cause harm or a holding pattern in which the treatment becomes "stuck." These clinical impasses often call for a treatment consultation involving a third party who consults to the treatment as a whole by meeting separately with both the therapist and the patient, and offering an outside perspective on what may be happening within the treatment and within each of the participants within the therapy relationship. 

In conducting a treatment consultation, my working assumption is that a clinical impasse marks the location where a specific vulnerability in the therapist meets a particular vulnerability in the patient. I attempt to discern the vulnerabilities involved for both members of the therapy dyad, as well as the inner work required by each of them in order for the impasse to dissolve.