Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist

Personal Coach

FREE 30-MINUTE INITIAL CONSULTATION OR A 90-MINUTE INTAKE FOR PRICE OF A BASIC SESSION 

(805) 306-1595

Specialties: Intimate relationships can be among life's most rewarding and most difficult experiences. As a relationship specialist, I focus on: 1) couples counseling, and; 2) helping people who are struggling with being single again after divorce, widowhood or a painful breakup.

For Couples Clients: Are you feeling the deep loneliness and hurt that comes from being in an unhappy relationship? Do you repeatedly find yourselves having destructive arguments that started out as trivial spats? Do you feel that your partner isn’t there for you when you need support the most? It’s sad to see that pain drain the energy out of you and affect other areas of your life, including your ability to work, parent and attend to your health. If you and your partner are committed to repairing your broken connections, our first goal is for each of you to communicate your primary causes of relationship pain and ensure that your partner fully heard you. Then you can move away from "attack and defend" mode and find new ways to live together lovingly and respectfully.

For Individual Clients: After you’ve been in a relationship, being alone again can be challenging. Whether you chose to end the relationship or are now “involuntarily single,” moving on to a happy, healthy new chapter in your life often involves going through some tough transitional times. As both a licensed marriage and family therapist and a personal coach, I can help you in several ways if you are newly single:

•    Therapy is called for if you’re experiencing intense emotional pain, such as the depression and anxiety that often accompany grief. Therapy is also the best route if you need to delve into the past to examine unhealthy relationship patterns or heal old emotional wounds.
•    Coaching might better suit your needs if you are relatively emotionally well-adjusted to being single again but need help with current pragmatic issues, such as learning to manage activities your former partner handled, dealing with financial or family challenges, and getting back into the dating world.

As a newly single person, your life is very different than it was before.
Together, we can explore both the differences and the possibilities that lie ahead.

Contact: (805) 306-1595 or renee@wellspringcounselinggroup.com

Available in Person or Via Phone/Webcam: I am available to work with clients in person in my Moorpark, CA, office, or via phone or webcam. I can provide therapy services to California residents and coaching services to clients anywhere.

Free E-newsletter: To get on the mailing list for my free e-newsletter, just e-mail me a request at renee@wellspringcounselinggroup.com.  To see past messages, visit the Blog page on this Web site.

Education & Licensure: M.A., Clinical Psychology, Pepperdine University, MFC 42747

Electronic Payment Options: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and debit cards

Insurance Accepted (For therapy clients only): Any plan that accepts out-of-network providers; I provide clients with monthly statements to submit to their insurance carriers for partial reimbursement of therapy costs.

Memberships: California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, Conejo Valley Mental Health Professionals Association

Certification: Certified as anger management provider by Anderson & Anderson

Keep the Spark Alive:               Tips for Couples
By Renée Haas

Maintaining a healthy connection with your partner can be challenging in today's busy world. Here are a few tips and conversation starters to help keep your relationship alive, pleasurable and enriching.

•    Create a relationship "wish list." Each partner writes down 10-15 things they consider to be part of an ideal relationship. Then the partners review each other’s lists and develop one list that includes the major things they will strive to achieve together.

•    Especially if you have children, be sure to schedule at least one adults-only "date night" per week. Switch off who gets to pick where to go and what to do. Use your imagination. Surprise each other. Have fun.

•    Choose platinum over gold. The Golden Rule asks that you treat others as you would like to be treated. The Platinum Rule encourages you to treat others (including your partner) as they would like to be treated.

•    If a disagreement is getting too heated, one of the partners can call a time out. That person then takes responsibility for re-raising the issue sometime within the next 24 hours, when the partners have calmed down and can communicate more productively.

•    Have a quiz night. Ask your partner 5-10 questions about yourself, such as "Who do I consider to be my best friend and why?" or "What was my favorite vacation we’ve taken together?" Even in long-term relationships, there's always plenty you can learn about each other.

•    Share with your partner what lessons about relationships you learned from your family-of-origin. Explore which lessons have been helpful and harmful. Tell your partner several relationship skills you learned from him or her.

Would Therapy or Coaching Better Meet Your Needs?
By Renée Haas

You know you want to improve your qualify of life, and you’ve decided to seek professional help. Now one of your choices is whether to use the services of a psychotherapist or a personal coach. What are the differences?

To begin with, people seeking therapy often have a fairly significant problem, such as depression, anxiety, major relationship distress or bereavement. Coaching clients are usually high-functioning people who are looking to their coach to help them address specific situations in a focused, action-oriented way.

Many therapists believe it’s important for clients to deal with unresolved issues from the past before they can optimally live in the present and fulfill their potential for the future.

In addition to addressing the current stressors that may have brought them to therapy, clients often explore such topics as patterns of past relationships with other people, including their families of origin. In the process, the clients frequently deal with emotional issues, heal past wounds and develop self-insight that can guide them more productively in the present and future.

Personal coaching, on the other hand, almost exclusively focuses on pragmatic elements of the present and future. Coaches and clients work together to assess major facets of the clients’ current lives, articulate goals in areas the clients want to address and develop action plans related to meeting those goals. Along the way, coaches help motivate clients and keep them accountable in order to produce results.

Licensed therapists must meet rigorous requirements related to advanced education and licensure, and they must abide by specific laws and codes of ethics. At this point, personal coaching is an unlicensed, self-regulating industry. Certification is optional.

When and where do coaching and therapy take place? Although this is not always the case, psychotherapy clients typically come in once a week to their therapists’ offices. Coaches usually go to locations convenient to their clients or, more commonly, they work over the phone and via e-mail.

Those are just some of the distinctions between therapy and coaching. Despite the differences, therapy and coaching are both oriented toward tapping into clients’ potential and helping them lead more fulfilled lives. They just go about it in different ways.

Will You Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions?
By Renée Haas

It's almost that time of year again when people eagerly prepare their list of New Year's resolutions. But turning them into reality is a difficult task for many people, as well-intentioned goals fall into the “Oops,” “Well, I really meant to….” or other category of  wishes that didn't quite translate into action.

What can you do to keep your 2010 New Year’s Resolutions and, in general, increase your ability to follow through on self-improvement goals?

A couple of key components in creating lasting change are to know yourself well and to build pleasure into the process.

For example, if you want to lose weight and improve your health, you might join a gym even though you’re not a “gym person” at heart. After a few weeks of doing cardiovascular exercise on a treadmill or elliptical machine, you might be bored to pieces and throw in the towel on the concept of exercising altogether.

If you had done some self-exploration before joining the gym, you might have remembered how much you loved playing AYSO soccer as a kid. Or you might have noted how much you look forward to watching one of the dancing shows currently so popular on television. If that’s the case, you might be better off joining an adult soccer league or signing up for salsa lessons through your local parks and recreation department. You’d be getting your exercise in a way that meets your personal criteria for fun.

Other elements of successful change are making realistic goals with short-term steps, and forgiving yourself when you stumble.

Some goals seem so overwhelming that people essentially give up on ever achieving them. But small, incremental improvements can be very powerful over time.

If your marriage is foundering, rather than creating a large, unspecific objective such as “We need to improve our communication,” start with small, achievable positive statements. These might include things such as, “During the coming week, I will make a sincere effort to stop interrupting my wife when she’s speaking to me” or “By next weekend, I will plan a date night with my husband where we can talk in a quiet restaurant away from the kids.”

Achieving these goals and seeing the positive results can then feed your belief that larger, more global changes are possible if you keep working toward them.

Compassion toward yourself can also go a long way. If you’re on a diet and find yourself face-down in Belgian chocolate one day, that doesn’t have to mean your diet is a permanent failure. Be kind to yourself, look at what triggered your slip, take a break if needed and then get back on track when you’re ready.

And don’t be ashamed to ask for backup. Enlist the help of your partner, a friend or relative, a therapist or personal coach to achieve your goals. Life is short. Commit yourself to achieving your dreams, starting today.