About Therapy
Gaining a trusting relationship is essential.
Starting therapy begins a process of figuring out how we will work together. I’ll ask a broad range of questions to try to understand your past experiences and goals for the future, and I’ll get a sense of how comfortable you are communicating (what your pace is, your style of speaking).
As with any relationship, this gets easier as we get to know one another.
The beginning of therapy is also a period of establishing trust. That can be particularly difficult with someone who’s had a Narcissistic parent. You’ve gotten a sort of unconscious “training” in constantly agreeing with the parent and taking your cues from them. So I’ll be aware of that.
Finding the proper distance is essential.
Therapy clients do this automatically, and I always respect the distance you establish as “safe.” I believe this is vitally important to the relationship, especially with anyone who has experienced trauma.
I won’t push you to encounter difficult material until you are ready to look at it. This can take a few sessions for some clients, and for some, it can take a few months. It’s OK; I’m pretty patient.
What’s that you say unconsciously?
As a psychoanalytically trained therapist, I always listen to unconscious and conscious communication.
I’m looking for old patterns that emerge in current relationships, and I’ll share these with you when I see them. (I’m not one of those ‘silent’ Psychoanalysts!).
How does all this help?
Understanding how you were traumatized and how it affected you helps. It allows you to acknowledge that your suffering was real, and that, in turn, opens the way to healing through feeling all the feelings associated with the past trauma.
Trying out new stuff, new ways of communicating during conflict, and speaking about closeness, desires, and wishes can be very scary at first, but exhilarating when it starts working!
The therapeutic relationship itself is healing. Having a kind, compassionate person who wants to get to know the real you, understand you, and help you grow is, well, healing! Even the inevitable miscommunications in any relationship can be healing when we talk about them openly and without malice, with a wish to understand what happened and where we went wrong.
About Ami Kaplan, LCSW
Becoming a therapist was a career change.
After growing up in Massachusetts, Illinois, and Israel, I graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and started my professional life as a software engineer writing (of all things) communications software. I did this for 12 years before following a nagging feeling that I was more interested in people than in computers.
In my early 30s, I went to grad school at NYU to study Clinical Social Work. I became a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), attended and graduated from a New York Psychoanalytic Institute (PPSC), and began working in various agencies and private practice.
Along the way, I also studied other modalities, including ‘Focusing,’ pioneered by Eugene Gendlin, which embraces ‘bodily-felt knowing.’ I’m now licensed in New York and Florida (for Telehealth).
My guiding mission in this work is to help people become their most authentic selves and overcome the obstacles that stand in their way.
In my spare time…
I enjoy being with friends and family (including my family of choice). I also enjoy hiking, biking, making pottery, and playing the fiddle in Bluegrass jams.