my philosophy
My goal is to work with you to create meaningful and lasting change.
People tend to describe me as open, calming, empathic, and fearless. Together, we will develop your capacity not only to feel better, but to be healthier. One aspect of therapy is the generation of insight. Understanding yourself is a powerful source of transformation and development. However, insight alone is not always enough to create psychological healing.
I work with people to generate deep insight but also to create a new way of being and feeling in the world. For these purposes, I often incorporate both experiential and mind/brain/body therapies into the work.
conditions/issues
I comfortably adults across the lifespan, including graduate and college students, mid-life, and retirees, with depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, panic, phobias, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), history of abuse, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), cPTSD, and dissociation.
I help people who are grieving losses, who have self-esteem issues, who have difficult family-of-origin relationships, who are forming or reforming their identity as a young adult or following profound life changes, who are exploring their sexual orientation or gender identity, and those interested in developing a greater capacity for connection and intimacy.
I also use my training in neuroscience to understand the brain/mind/body connection and to translate this knowledge into clinical application. People find this perspective particularly helpful in working with anxiety, depression, trauma, sleep, and pain.
my experience
I received my doctorate in clinical psychology from MSPP in Boston, and my doctorate in neuroscience from Washington University.
I have experience in private practice psychotherapy, primary care behavioral health, inpatient work with psychosis and serious mental illness, crisis intervention, and neuropsychological evaluation.
I am a member of the American Psychological Association, the Massachusetts Psychological Association, the New England Society for the Treatment of Trauma, APA Division 44 – the Society for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues, and the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy.
treatment
I blend many ways of working to disentangle the complexity of emotional turmoil, biology, past history, stress, trauma, and familiar but self-defeating patterns.
The major modalities I work within are: talk therapy (depth therapy), internal family systems (IFS), mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), eye motion desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), emotionally-focused therapy (EFT), and brain/mind/body based interventions. See more about these therapies here.
I also believe that therapy must always take into account how social factors, including class, race, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, ability, and age influence how we function in the world.
Within these contexts, therapy can help release one’s natural ability to feel, choose, work, love, and think more freely – that is, to act and feel more like oneself.
shelleyschliefphd@gmail.com
617-862-9362
1330 Beacon Street, Suite 349
Brookline, MA 02446