Services
Individual Psychotherapy
Gain clarity and support in order to thrive
Clients pursue treatment with me to initiate the healing and change necessary to live their best life. In my 15 years of experience, I have helped individuals navigate relationship and work conflicts, medical illness, grief, trauma, infertility, severe mental illness, and a range of other challenges. Using a collaborative approach we uncover avenues towards growth, self-compassion and resolution.
Our work together will incorporate an eye towards long-term change. My therapeutic philosophy involves moving from reflexive to reflective living.
An aspect of this approach is guiding clients to recognize and address shame. For many people pursuing therapy, acknowledging the need for outside support can induce a sense of inadequacy or shame. When shame goes underground, it can hamper progress because its presence is a core reason we make ourselves small, avoid risk, and struggle to feel good enough in our relationships. Learn more about shame and my approach to working with this essential yet slippery emotion here.
I welcome the opportunity to collaborate with you in this process. Reach out here.
Relationship Therapy
In many ways, all of my therapeutic work with clients incorporates addressing relationships. How we show up with others, negotiate our needs vis a vis the needs of others, navigate conflict, repair (or not) when there has been a breach of trust – these are all crucial aspects of life that can promote or hinder our capacity for managing stress, challenges and trauma and also, importantly, enjoy and celebrate our successes, milestones and passions.
I work with relationships of all kinds: romantic partners, married couples, adult siblings, parents and adult children or teens, friends, extended family members, and colleagues. Strain in our connection is part of all relationships at some point. Our ability to manage those strains through increasing our understanding and empathy for self and other, has the potential to deepen our connection.
It is a common misunderstanding that in order to have a better relationship, one needs to get it right almost all of the time. I hear my clients say “If I don’t say it the perfect way, my partner/friend/sibling will jump down my throat.” But the reality is that in secure, healthy and loving attachments, each person is not getting it right the majority of the time! So while it does matter to get it right sometimes, of utmost importance is being able to repair when one person or both don’t get it right.
Learn More About My Approach to Relational Work
To learn more about how I conceptualize intimate relationships, take a look at my blog posts in which I detail my ideas about the role shame plays in both interfering with and facilitating intimacy as well as my three part series describing the path to connection through identifying blocks, specifically defensiveness, uncovering the feelings behind defensiveness, and linking feelings with the underlying need in order to be able to communicate clearly and directly without blame. Read more about my therapeutic philosophy and how therapy helps us slow down.
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Relationship therapy is a deep intuitive approach to learning, not memorizing facts and figures or how to do “I” statements. It means acquiring the ability to tune in to a felt sense of your unique emotional needs, understanding how you cope when those needs are unmet, and integrating a more effective way to communicate those needs.
Broadly speaking, I guide people towards a recognition of the underlying ineffectual process causing the strain, leading to ruptures that get stuck and fester. Sometimes the strain leads to ongoing disconnection and alienation, while in other cases it provokes escalations and heated arguments, or, in many cases, some combination of these dynamics.
My approach is experiential: like learning to ride a bike, or sing a song, learning is achieved by practicing and actually doing. I pay close attention to what everyone is saying but also what is not being said or what is being expressed non-verbally. By shifting attention towards those more automatic and implicit expressions of one’s experience, we will learn together about what feels too hard to acknowledge, say or feel and work to create the safety required to put forth those hidden aspects of your experiences.
Shame-Informed Practice
Regardless of the specific challenge you’re facing—whether it’s in individual therapy, a relationship rift, or professional consultation—my work is guided by a shame-informed practice.
Most of us recoil from the word shame, instinctively trying to change the subject. Yet, shame is a fundamental part of what makes relationships possible. Learning to manage it in healthy, growth-promoting ways is a key developmental milestone that paves the way for deep and meaningful connections with others. Why? Because shame tells us when we have crossed a boundary with someone, or our own boundary has been violated. It tells us when we need to tend to our connection with the other person because something got off track.
We all carry shame and it gets activated throughout our lives in ways obvious and subtle. Sometimes shame is so subtle that we are not aware it is operating and influencing how we are navigating our lives. I regard shame work as an essential component of my approach to psychotherapy, supervision, and consultation. As I have continued to hone my understanding and approach to shame, it has become clearer to me that in confusion and disconnect, shame has played some protective role. By figuring out what it is protecting us from, we have a key to emotional freedom and growth.
To learn more, check out some of my blog posts for more information on my conceptualization of shame and my application of a shame-informed lens.
If you are interested in exploring shame through therapy, reach out to me connect with me here. If you are a mental health professional looking to explore consultation, or training for yourself or your group, email me directly at keren@drkerensofer.com.
supervision & consultation
Clinical supervision and case consultation for therapists and trainees
I welcome the opportunity to be part of your journey if you are seeking supervision or consultation for psychotherapy or assessment.
I am offering one-on-one consultation for clinicians who are looking for support around a particular case or challenge, or for ongoing consultation, in person or virtually. In addition, I frequently offer virtual small group consultation and am now running several shame-informed consultation groups for therapists looking to sharpen the skills and go deeper around relational approaches that address stuck points or impasses. Interested clinicians can sign up to receive updates on my trainings and free offerings here or get in touch with me by email: keren@drkerensofer.com.
To learn more about my style and approach to supervision and consultation, watch my very first youtube video Enhancing Your Clinical Lens with a Shame-Informed Approach.
Evaluations
I perform psychological evaluations for immigration purposes, diagnoses for school or work, third-party reproduction, and other therapeutic goals. Each evaluation is customized based on your particular questions or needs. I will work closely with your attorney, doctor, or family members when collaboration is needed.
Evaluations Offered
- Evaluations for Immigration Purposes
- Asylum
- VAWA
- Hardship
- Cancellation of Removal
- U-Visa
- Third-Party Reproduction
- Ovum donor psychological screenings
- Donor Recipient psycho-educational consultations
- Gestational Carrier psychological evaluations
- Evaluations for Work, School, and Diagnosis
- Personality Assessment
- Learning disabilities & learning style
- Intellectual abilities
- Mental health diagnosis
Presentations & Workshops
I design and present talks and workshops on wellness and mental health topics such as burn out, vicarious trauma, workplace relationships, grief and loss, and resilience. I welcome the opportunity to assist your corporate, health or non-profit organization. Read more here about past presentations and workshops I have offered.
In recent years, I have expanded into developing trainings and presentations for clinical audiences. Deepening Our Connections: Leveraging Shame to Address Impasses and Improve Psychotherapy Outcomes is the introductory training I developed to bridge this gap in most of our clinical education. I also have presented at conferences and for groups of clinicians and professional organizations on a range of clinical topics. I have launched a new complementary monthly series called Shame Bites which are 30-minute, virtual clinical talks for a focused look at how a shame-informed lens can help us address the wide range of clinical challenges we face as therapists.