My name is Bonnie Faber, and I welcome you to the Website for my psychotherapy practice in San Jose, California. Since you’ve come to this site, you may be experiencing pain or distress and searching for help. While experiencing emotional pain is part of being human, sometimes pain or distress is severe or long-standing and impairs our daily lives. If you feel emotional distresses such as anxiety, depression or grief are persistent and troubling, professional therapy can help. Psychotherapy can help you overcome innumerable problems and obstacles.
- Resolving relationship difficulties,
- Overcoming self-confidence/self-esteem issues and shyness,
- Recovery from behavioral addictions, grieving and loss, or trauma,
And much more are possible. Like you, first and foremost, I am a human being, a person. I also happen to be an experienced psychotherapist. What has become of most significance to me in my work as a therapist is how these two “identities” have become more and more integrated over my 25 year career.
Because the majority of our emotional wounds occur in relationships, I believe they are best healed through relationship. Thus, I describe the therapeutic work I do as working “relationally” with my patients. (I prefer to use the term ‘patient’ (vs. ‘client’) when referring to the people I work with, out of respect for the suffering and distress a person seeking therapy is generally experiencing.) The therapeutic relationship differs from all other relationships, as what you disclose is kept strictly confidential, and the focus remains on you. Therapy involves you and me interacting with and engaging one another, with the goals of enhancing your self-knowledge and providing you with new and reparative experiences.
What I have discovered is truly healing is my capacity to offer you a new and different experience of yourself – as it is almost certain that I will see you very differently than your parents (or caregivers) saw you. Your experience of being seen and interacted with differently is a huge part of the healing process. My experience has proven that increased frequency of contact (two or more sessions per week for individual therapy) significantly deepens the therapeutic relationship and “speeds up” this process, as does our mutual ability to be open and honest with one another. You will experience me as being fully present, and often sharing my experience of being in the room with you.
Seeking the assistance of a therapist is the first, and often, most difficult step on your healing journey.
Despite your readiness for change, the self-exposure required by psychotherapy is not necessarily easy or comfortable. You may initially worry about how I see you, or what you may discover about yourself during the course of therapy, for example. There is almost always tension between the opposing desires of wanting to drop our defenses while remaining protected.
It is not uncommon for one’s defenses to become heightened simply by sitting down in a therapist’s office, in which case you may resist the situation using the very defensive patterns you’ve come to therapy to change. I recognize these defenses are at work and that they are needed for protection until you feel safe enough to let them down. Trust takes time to develop.