Nancy WhiteLMFT

#40492

I am also passionate about helping clients improve their relationships and use a compassionate, collaborative, directive, and goal-oriented method. My approach is rooted in a cognitive-behavioral model, where I help you examine multiple aspects of problems, including environmental factors, stressors, and your thinking patterns. Some might think that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) doesn’t give enough credit to our emotions, but this isn’t the case! In fact, the beginning of therapy starts with exploring the painful emotions that bring people to therapy. Before therapy changes can happen and goals can be set, I always want to fully understand what clients are going through by listening and showing empathy and compassion. In a nutshell, I’m describing what is called the “5-part model” in cognitive therapy, which comprises environment, physiology, emotions, behavior, and thoughts. With cognitive therapy, we will work together to figure out the best place for you to start making changes: it may be a behavior change, modifying your environment, working on your relationships, and will almost certainly include how you think about a problem and what you might be saying to yourself to fuel difficult emotions. Using a theory of relationships called Family Systems, I will encourage you to explore relationship patterns learned in childhood and break dysfunctional patterns. I am well-versed in communication skills and enjoy teaching new methods, sometimes using role-play in sessions, to help my clients apply basic, even simple, strategies. I also encourage clients to work in between sessions, which might include communication exercises, reading articles or books, listening to podcasts, and learning new stress management techniques.

English

MA - Psychology, Emphasis - Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling, Chapman University