SPECIALTIES OF PRACTICE AND PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

I have extensive experience in working with adolescents and adults both in individual therapy and family therapy. While intended to create joy and happiness, relationships can also produce anxiety and stress in our lives. I have a strong commitment to helping my clients ease their stress through my relationship centered therapy. I also work with couples who are experiencing communication and relationship issues. I work with my clients both in long term and short term based therapy and tailor it according to my clients needs and presenting issues. These are some of the services I offer:

Individual Therapy I work on enhancing the individual’s quality of life by understanding the behavior and thought patterns that are not working for them anymore. I strive to help them replace negative thought and behavior patterns with those that would enhance their life and allow for true joy.
• Explore what the presenting issues are
• Explore what current modes of coping are
• Review what has helped or hurt in the past
• Develop more effective coping skills
• Get in touch with inner strength and resources
• Look at the situation from a strength based perspective and learn new
    coping skills to help with healthy functioning

Family Therapy includes therapy with all/most members of the family members so that the entire ‘system’ can be looked at by viewing how each ‘subsystem’ affects and effects the whole. To exert effective change in the entire family system changes need to happen within the sub-systems, namely family members.
• To understand how each person functions within the family that causes for
    issues to arise
• Helping clients to learn to work effectively individually and as members of
    the family which would enhance relationships, improve communication
    and positive growth and improve family functioning as a whole

Marriage/Couple’s Therapy I will work towards helping the couple reconnect in a renewed way that will allow for rebuilding hope and passion; equip the couple to deal with relationship issues in an effective and adaptive manner.
• Commit to working on the relationship in therapy and at home
• Deal with issues that brought the couple to therapy
• Help them look at the problem from both their perspectives
• Learn effective communication skills
• Learn how to connect with one another on non-verbal terms
   (emotional, spiritual and psychic)
• Re-establish ways in which the couple can improve trust, hope and
    commitment to each other

Therapy to treat Depression and Anxiety I will help the client develop coping skills to manage life’s stresses more effectively and efficiently. Anxiety management entails some of these steps:
• Recognize negative schemas (thoughts and cognitions) that lead to
    stress and depression
• Replace negative schemas with positive functional ones by
    confronting the fears and anxieties that accompany them
• Deal with the feelings that came along with the confrontation
• Learn effective coping skills to use in the face of anxiety provoking and
    depression causing situations
• Use newly learned coping skills effectively and successfully in stress
    causing situations

In addition the above described services, I also provide therapeutic services for the following issues:
Ethnic and Cross-Cultural issues
Women's issues
Chronic Sadness
Anxiety and Depression
Trauma-related issues
Self esteem related issues
Grief and loss
Relationship issues
Personal growth and development
Pre-marital counseling
Life transition issues
Communication skills
Stress related issues
Victims of Crime

I am a member of good standing of:
CAMFT (California Association of Marriage and Family Therapy)
www.camft.org

 License #41690

Copyright © 2007 Ashwini Gupta
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, MFT #41690
All rights reserved. Site created by Marcus Barbosa.