Are you
tired of spending time in therapy analysing your problems but find you're not able to
change them? Do you have lots of "insight" that doesn't seem to help you
actually get a handle on your behaviour?
When you come in for your first appointment,
you may have a lot to say, or you may be so nervous that you don't know what
say. Trust is a key issue that may have to be revisited because it is not a
static thing - it comes and it goes, and generally has to be earned to be
meaningful. We start by exploring and enhancing your strengths and resources. Much of what you need to work on may not be
accessible to direct verbal processing. Problems "trapped in the body" do not go
away simply by talking. For example, even if you "know" that you are
physically safe place, until your body calms down enough to take in new
information, you
won't be able to make use of this intellectual knowledge because those
centres of the brain may be "off-line". For this reason, PSI addresses issues of
perceived safety and trust first, and teaches self awareness and self modulation of physical activation levels
throughout the work.
PSI enables you to re-embody yourself, identify and establish personal
boundaries, match the right “feed to the right need”, and frees up energy
entangled in obsessions and compulsions, or drained by body memories and
reenactments. It helps you work with
behaviours that feel out of control by helping you reconnect to disowned aspects
of self, and develop internal cooperation and shared goals.
Individual sessions are charged at $120 per 50
minute session. Longer sessions are pro-rated accordingly.
To make an appointment, call
(027) 657 2106 oremail: jlightstone-at-gmail.com
Individual Eating Problems Work
Eating and body image problems can express some of our deepest experiences as
women and men. Issues such as staying true to our hunger/s; defining ourselves
within and outside of relationships to others; and taking up space and being
visible in a sometimes dangerous world, may show up in our relationships to food
and body.
When you come in for your first appointment, you may have a lot to say, or you
may be so nervous that you don't know what say. Trust is a key issue, and you
may feel afraid to trust or you may want to dive right in. Either way, we will
both come to understand that trust is not a static thing - it comes and it goes,
and generally has to be earned to be meaningful. While we are exploring these
complexities, it's often a relief to start talking.
We begin by helping you explore your
personal experiences of food, feeding, fat, and body size, and why these issues
are so painful. You may have been put on diets or diet pills, forced to eat when
you weren't hungry, weighed and lectured by well meaning (or not so well
meaning?) doctors or relatives, or felt otherwise disrespected and intruded
upon. I will not be weighing you or telling you what or what not to eat. This
may feel like a relief, or you may not like that. Some people become dependent
on others to tell them what to eat. I will simply be encouraging you to sense
your hunger and satiation points, and to notice when you can follow them as
guides, and when it seems too difficult.
The PSI Approach to
Eating Problems
We may choose to include journal, art,
or movement work, and guided fantasies to help you express what the eating
problem has been trying to say. Ultimately, you will learn to eat when you are
hungry and stop when you are full. But in the meantime, when you cannot always
do this, we will use the symptoms to point us to the triggers and issues in your
life that you have been using bingeing, starving, and/or purging to solve. We
work these through one by one, until you feel stronger to face these
difficulties without depriving or punishing yourself with food.
Individual sessions are charged at $120 per
50 minute session. Longer sessions are pro-rated accordingly.To make an appointment call (027) 657 2106 or email: jlightstone-at-gmail.com
Eating and body image problems can
express some of our deepest experiences as women and men. Issues such as staying
true to our hunger/s; defining ourselves within and outside of relationships to
others; and taking up space and being visible in a sometimes dangerous world,
may show up in our relationships to food and body.
Gender roles, the victimization of
"fat", and cultural stereotypes all play a role in the development of eating and
body image problems. These influences interact with our genetic endowments,
family upbringing, and experiences with peers in a multitude of ways. All of
this must be brought into our explorations of how your particular problem with
food developed the way it did.
Throughout we will be working toward
increased self esteem and body size acceptance. Acceptance does not mean the
same as approval. Like trust, it comes and goes, and has to be earned to be
meaningful. But this acceptance can be earned as you struggle to attune yourself
to your body's internal signals, work through exercise resistance or compulsion,
and prove to yourself that you can become a reliable self-feeder.
If you are having difficulty standing up for
yourself or asking for what you really need and want, you must first understand
what is getting in your way. In addition to working to remove these impediments,
there are many different skills and techniques that can be learned and practiced
in a therapy setting. Judy led her first Assertiveness Training Group as a counselling intern in 1980; she helped design and run an empowerment curriculum
for displaced homemakers from 1981-1983, and has been learning new skills ever
since. Self-empowerment is a natural outcome of individual therapy, and
many of the approaches used in workshops and groups are applied in one to one
counselling, or when the issues interfere with your relationships,
couples or family counselling may offer the best solutions.
Individual sessions are charged at $120 per
50 minute session. Longer sessions are pro-rated accordingly.For example, Couples and family sessions are charged at $144 for a 60 minute session
or $180 for 75 minutes.
To make an appointment call (027) 657 2106 or
email: jlightstone-at-gmail.com
Judy
Lightstone, PhDhas
been providing therapy for couples and families for the past 24 years and training
professional therapists to do this work for the past 22 years. She
received her PhD in Humanities with a specialisation in trauma psychology in
2006, and offers counselling services in West Auckland.
Clients describe her as gentle and compassionate in a strong
way, tempered by an easy sense of humor. She helps couples
become more aware of themselves and each other's interactional patterns, and
offers support and advocacy as they learn to live with greater understanding of
each other and the world at large. She integrates
Hakomi Couples
Therapy, which teaches bodily
mindfulness and empathy with self and other,
Imago Therapy,
which offers ways for partners to be more loving and compassionate with one
another,
Bowenian Therapy
which uses a genogram- something akin to an
emotional family tree that maps out the family system pictorially, with the
research of
John Gottman
into a whole couple/family system approach she calls
Psychosomatic Integration (PSI). To view
a more detailed description of her approach to working with
families, click
here.
Auckland
PSITM Institute 
