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Dr. Kluger and his staff treat a wide variety of problems and provide a variety of services. The following is a description of some of the services provided:
Marriage Counseling
All marriages run into snags from time to time. Some partners are quick to think of divorce, but is that just the easy answer?
Can you relate to any of the following issues:
- Fighting between us is unfair and or cruel.
- Intimacy and sex in our marriage is gone, or very infrequent.
- Hitting, shoving, kicking, etc. is happening.
- Communication between us is going in circles.
- My spouse seems too much like a parent.
- Our personalities seem incompatible.
- The D(ivorce) word has come up.
- The relationship is unbalanced, and only one of us is trying.
- Is he/she having an affair?
- We rarely resolve our family problems or disagreements.
- He/she is unable to compromise.
- We always fight about money.
- We can't agree on how to raise our children.
- His/her family is always getting in the way.
Skills can be taught to:
- Improve communication for the couple.
- Learn to "fight" fairly in your marriage.
- Develop better problem solving skills with your spouse.
- Understand how the family you were raised in colors your current picture.
- Reawaken Intimacy.
- Prioritize and take positive actions towards your goals.
Treatment Approaches:
People, particularly couples, are hesitant to seek the help of a therapist. They think, "Why spend money to hear a counselor tell me what I already know!" or "I don't want to go and tell a complete stranger about our personal problems!" While a therapist may tell you what "you already know", he or she will also be able to offer solutions. In couples/marriage therapy, a therapist acts as an impartial mediator. The therapist may guide the couple to understand how their relationship works and how to relate to each other in more adaptive ways. Then the couple may learn how to listen and make compromises and see things differently. Sometimes, bickering about small things is actually about something larger (is it really that your husband never cleans or is it that you don't feel supported by him?).
Couples or marital therapy, can be very brief and focused (how to talk about finances) or can continue for several years. Generally, couples meet with their therapist once a week.
Couple or marital therapy includes many kinds of therapy:
- Individual Marital Therapy
- Both partners go to the same or different therapists separately.
- Conjoint Marital Therapy
- Both partners go together to see a therapist. This is the most common method.
- Group Therapy
- Several couples meet with one or two therapists.
It is important to recognize when you and your partner are having problems. Many therapists have said that couples often wait too long to seek help. By the time many couples begin therapy, problems have escalated making reconciliation more difficult. Problems in a relationship do not have to become crises before seeking help. The earlier a couple begins the therapy process, the more heartache they can avoid.
Marital Therapy or Divorce?
If you have tried marital counseling or think it has already gone beyond that, it is possible that you need to begin to protect yourself, and prepare for a divorce. Not every couple's problems can be solved. There are several precautions that everyone should take. Divorce coaching may be useful. This can be accomplished either individually or together as a couple. For persons facing separation and divorce, counseling can still be helpful, in order to make the ending more peaceful. If there are children involved, then there are many non legal issues that need to be addressed which a therapist can help with. The children's needs are of the upmost importance. They are fragile and do not have the experiences of an adult to fully understand what divorce means. Fighting parents only makes this worse for them. It is important to put aside your anger and deal with what is best for the kids. They need two parents to love and who love them. As much as you may be angry with your spouse now, the children do not need to know that. Even in difficult situations, they usually want both parents to stay together and generally do not take sides unless the parents manipulate them to. They should never be forced into a position where they have to decide. It is not their decision to make.
Obviously there are many emotional decisions to be made during a divorce or separation process which a therapist can help with. If a divorce is inevitable, than divorce mediation is a good alternative to fighting it out between two lawyers. This is a process where both partners sit down with a divorce mediator (usually a lawyer and/or psychologist) and work out all the details of the divorce in a civil manner. It is far less expensive than getting two separate lawyers, and usually both partners feel they have won some issues and not lost as many. Of course it requires a certain degree of cooperation and acceptance for this process to work.
Dr. Kluger and his staff are qualified marital therapists as well as helping couples through the difficult process of divorce and/or separation.
Family Therapy
Family therapy often helps families that have difficulties communicating and handling conflict with each other. One viewpoint is that a family operates as a system; when one member acts, that action affects all the others. When one person changes how he or she interacts with another member, it will affect the rest of the family.
One way to explain this idea is to use a sports team as an analogy. A team works as a unit but each member has his or her own job that he or she must perform in order for the team to function. When one person changes how he or she does their job, the rest of the team has to adjust accordingly even when the change is a good one.
Treatment Approach:
In family therapy, the therapist may moderate how the family interacts and help the family to change maladaptive ways of interacting while trying to maintain the balance within the family. Sometimes, when a family first comes to therapy, one person has been identified as the "patient." Even though one person is the patient, the entire family may learn how the rest of the their actions, feelings, and beliefs contribute to that person's problems. They may also learn how the family works as a whole.
How long a family remains in treatment depends on what they need and how they and their therapist view their situation. Sometimes, therapy lasts only for several weeks where they "trouble-shoot" for specific issues, while other times therapy continues for several years.
Working with Children:
Instead of Family Therapy, another approach when a child is having specific problems is to work with the child directly. These are cases where the child may be having problems in school or with other children. They child may have learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder (with and without hyperactivity), or social problems. Sessions are spent with the parents to teach them the parenting skills needed to help their child, while other sessions are spent with the child, either in "play therapy" or behavioral/social skills training. Play therapy uses games (some specific board games designed by other therapists, as well as other general games) which not only help to relax the child, but create an environment which the child can express their emotions. Children are not always good at verbally telling someone how they feel or even know or understand feelings themselves. Game playing and role playing with a trained therapist helps to elicit this information.
Patience is the key to this kind of therapy, as working with children is more like solving a puzzle. Parents need to understand this process and use the therapists suggestions. Positive reward is the key in most of these situations and punishment is lessened.
Medication:
At the Center for Behavioral Health, we are a non medical facility. We do have psychiatrists and pediatricians that we work with, but our approach is non medical to start. We do not push medication on our patients but we do know when the recommendation is needed.
Dr. Kluger and his staff have many years experience working with families and children, and will discuss the type of therapy needed for your family during your initial evaluation.
Cognitive Therapy
The purpose of cognitive therapy is to teach a person how their thoughts are controlling their emotions. Therefore, learning techniques aimed at examining the thought process and learning ways to change the intensity of these internal words, can change our emotions or reactions to life's stress.
The aim of cognitive therapy is NOT to deny feelings, or suppress them, but simply learn how our illogical statements, or exaggerations can exacerbate our symptoms. It is a short term, structured therapy that is very effective in treating a wide variety of problems. Many people prefer this type of treatment over the classical Freudian therapy since it is quicker and deals more with the person's problems in the 'here and now' rather than dwelling on their past. This does not imply that a cognitive therapist will not talk with you about your past or childhood. He most certainly will, but that is not the focus of your treatment.
Behavior Therapy
This type of therapy is often used in conjunction with cognitive therapy. It simply deals with teaching the patient to change certain behaviors in their life in order to change how they feel. Doing things differently, along with changing our cognitions can be a very effective method for treating many problems. Behavior therapy is also used with children. Helping them to shape certain behaviors through a series of rewards is used with problems such as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and other behavioral problems.
Psychological Testing
Psychological and Neuropsychological Testing is used for a variety of problems for both adults and children.
Psychological testing - This can be used to more clearly diagnosis a patient. The tests are designed to find emotional and personality differences that are not apparent from a regular psychotherapy visit. Some of these tests are in the form of questionaires, others are more open ended questions and still others involve drawings of your emotions.
Neuropsychological Testing can be used for different problems. These range from more accurately diagnosing children and adult learning disabilities, to Attention Deficit Disorder. In addition these tests can also help clarify the extent of a head injury and even evidence of dementia and Alzheimers Disease. These test all the different ways we process information. This includes short and long
term memory, spatial relations, math, reading, writing. Some of these tests are timed and you need to respond quickly, while others are untimed. They test for attentional problems, concentration, accuracy, processing speed as well as cognitive dysfunction.
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