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Therapists:
I am a clinical social worker who has been in practice for 26 years. I see individuals, couples, and families. I specialize in substance abuse treatment, couples treatment, and treatment of stress and anxiety. My clients range in age from late adolescence to older adults. I frequently see people who are dissatisfied with some area of their life and feel "stuck"—my clients want to change, but are unsure how to go about making that change. In addition to my professional expertise, I try to bring a warm and caring approach to my practice that many clients find beneficial and supportive in helping them make that "change" and move toward their treatment goals. My background: After receiving my MSW degree from Boston College, I began my career as a clinical social worker at the alcohol and substance abuse treatment center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. While at McLean, I worked in inpatient and outpatient settings with individuals and their families struggling with substance abuse. I was also an instructor at McLean Hospital’s Training Center for Addictions Treatment. Throughout my career, I have continued to maintain my substance abuse specialty and rely on the 12-step program in treatment. In addition to my work in substance abuse treatment, I have spent 20 years working as a clinical social worker in Employee Assistance Programs. In that capacity I worked with individuals, couples, and groups .In addition to substance abuse treatment, my work concentrated on three majors areas –balancing work and home, stress management and grief counseling. My approach: With couples and families, I focus on helping my clients learn new, more effective ways to communicate, as well as ways they can accept, understand, and support each other. In my practice, this skill building approach has allowed couples to deal with grief, trauma, and betrayal, and to rebuild their relationship. My work with individuals focuses on identifying and accepting feelings. However, I find it equally important for my clients to understand the internal conflicts that may be contributing to their distress. As with couples and families, I believe that effective communication is key, and I work with individuals to communicate more effectively with family, friends and work colleagues. Many times, improved communication skills help ease some of the problems a client is encountering. For all my clients, whether individual, couples, or families, I believe in the importance of not only understanding problems, but also taking the steps to make positive change. Sometimes that change is simply learning not to respond with anger, to learn to listen and accept more. Sometimes, however a client, either individual, couple or family, wants to make more significant change and in that phase of treatment my role is to help with goal setting and coaching the client to take the necessary steps. I believe that we all learn and change more readily when we start from a position of strength. My style is interactive; however, I temper my style to most effectively meet the needs of each client. Much of what we all have to deal with is accepting the events in our life that are beyond our control. With all my clients, I strive to help them understand, accept and, if necessary, grieve the events that life has dealt them. Equally as important, when dealing with couples and families, I try to teach them to help each other with that acceptance. I also strive to give my clients the encouragement and skill to change those aspects of their lives that is within their control to change. I thrive on working together with my clients to tackle the challenge of identifying what is most important to the client and then helping my clients remove the barriers that are blocking their progress toward positive change. If you want to meet another therapist click here. |
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Needham Psychotherapy
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Noreen Kavanaugh, LICSW