Services

In my practice I treat patients with all kinds of problems or psychic disorders such as depression, anxiety, adjustment difficulties, sleep disorders, posttraumatic stress disorders, personality disorders, somatoform disorders, eating disorders, or schizophrenic disorders. This is not a complete list, maybe you are not able yet to name your problem. I also have a focus on Adult Third Culture Kid issues and transition and relocation difficulties.

Behavior therapy is a well established and reliable method of psychotherapy. Coming from learning theory it has undergone many changes and advancements so that now the influences of cognitions and emotions on actual behavior are in focus. Behavior therapy looks for predisposing, triggering and maintaining factors of behavior and is very target and activity oriented.

During sessions we will develop an idea of how your difficulties are correlated to your life history, your behavior, cognitions, and emotions. Then we will develop ideas to change maladaptive factors and test them in real life. In this process you are the expert for yourself and I will assist you with my therapeutic knowledge and experience. Sometimes during this process I might ask you to observe certain aspects of your life or try new behavior. 

After a traumatic experience (such as traffic accident, sexual abuse, war experience, neglect or other) most people suffer from uncomfortable feelings, thoughts and sentiments. They fear further danger, they reexperience the situation over and over in their mind, are much more nervous or freeze. They try to avoid the memory of the experience, feel detached from their environment. They have trouble concentrating, maybe feel ashamed or guilty. Usually these symptoms taper off after a while. Sometimes it happens though that symptoms persist and a trauma sequelea disorder develops. This may result in a depression or anxiety disorder or a post traumatic stress disorder.

In trauma therapy, which combines different psychotherapeutic approaches, the self healing capabilities of the patient are activated to overcome the trauma. Patients are stabilized by various techniques to be able to cope with daily life and not be overwhelmed by their trauma. The goal of treatment is to process the traumatic experience so it can become a (even very bad) normal experience among others in life. When a sufficient stability has been reached and if the patient wants to he or she can confront him/herself with the traumatic experience itself. A more thorough confrontation with the trauma and its consequences helps to overcome the trauma correlated symptoms. For this confrontation there are also various techniques and methods available. 

In Germany psychotherapy follows a certain formal pattern: We will make an appointment and you will come to one to three sessions of consultation (Sprechstunde), each lasting about 50 minutes. In these sessions we get to know each other, you tell me about your problem, and we try to find out, what an adequate help or treatment might be.

If behavior or trauma therapy is an adequate treatment in your case we will have 2-4 so called probatory sessions of 50 minutes each, where you tell me more about your problems and your life. We will try to find out, why you are not feeling well and how your problem is connected with your life history and your behavior. We also put the emphasis on your skills and ressources. These sessions also give us the opportunity to find out whether we can work with each other and whether you feel safe working with me. If we both feel comfortable with each other you have to see a medical doctor to get a physical (as a psychologist I don’t have sufficient knowledge of somatic disorders). Following this we will file a request for psychotherapy with your medical insurance, either as a short term therapy with up to 24 sessions or a long term therapy with 60 sessions, each 50 minutes. If we need more time we can request more sessions. Up to 80 sessions are paid by the insurance companies.