I help individuals and couples who want to improve the quality of their relationships – to others and to themselves. I help people who want to communicate better, who want to listen to and understand their partner better, and who want to get more of a handle on their reactions. I also work with individuals who want to feel less stressed, who want to feel better about who they are, who want more clarity, and who know that a greater sense of fulfillment and peace is possible.

Welcome to Inspirations, founded in 2005 as a source for positive psychotherapy and counseling. Located in Acton, MA and Ashburnham, MA, Inspirations counseling is individualized, empathic, and professional. The approach I use is to help people identify and use their personal values and strengths to overcome difficulties and create a truly joyful life.

Northampton Sex Therapy Associates, LLC (NSTA) is the only group private practice in New England dedicated exclusively to providing sex therapy, relationship therapy, and sexuality counseling to individuals, couples, and people in poly and non-monogamous relationships. Like most other forms of psychotherapy practice, sex therapy is exclusively talk therapy. This means meeting regularly with a therapist to talk about how to overcome whatever problem you have presented. During these meetings, sex therapists share their knowledge of human sexuality and expertise in working with sexual functioning and relationship challenges. Our clinical approach is grounded in research and evidence, rather than smoke and mirrors or vague, general promises. We provide clinical approaches and solutions that actually work, based on research and clinical experience. Over the course of a person's lifetime, multiple factors can add up and lead to difficulties with sex. Stress, trauma, illness, the side effects of medications, depression, and lack of self-esteem often negatively impact a person’s sexual functioning and desire. It is not uncommon for couples and individuals to experience sex-related challenges at some point in their lives. Everyone, and every body, deserves to experience satisfying, exciting, loving, and fulfilling sexual relationships and sexual contact. Sex therapy can often help. Most clients come to us with trauma, shame and guilt about the ways in which they are sexual and embodied. NSTA therapists understand the ways in which trauma—and the resulting fear and anxiety—impacts sexual functioning, and inhibits healthy sexual behavior. We help clients overcome sexual difficulties by using trauma-­informed clinical practices. Anxiety and shame are at the root of most sexual dysfunctions. These are typically emotions and feelings that trap human beings in rigid and fearful ways of expressing, or not expressing, themselves. These emotions and feelings have a powerful impact, particularly on how we manifest ourselves in sexual ways, sometimes to the point of retreating and hiding our bodies and sexuality, and occasionally to places of sexual compulsivity and over-expression. Regardless of the ways in which clients experience challenges with sex, we are in a unique position to help them navigate the often complex pathway toward feeling at home in their bodies and in their sexuality.

I'm a senior clinical psychologist who helps couples during the worst of times. My specialty is working with couples who haven't been helped by other couples therapists. 81% of therapists surveyed say that they work with couples, however only 12% have ever taken a formal course in the subject. I've spent my professional career working as a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, the premier organization for those practicing marital therapy. I've been a sex therapist at the highest level (Diplomate) for over thirty years. More recently, I completed the most advanced training in Gottman Method Couples Therapy, a way of working with couples that has over 35 years behind it. ...and hard science. Couples come to see me for many reasons: • A couple is fighting a lot and it impacts the overall tone of the marriage My job is to teach you about destructive patterns and how to break the cycle. I'm active, direct, and help you to put your energies toward change. Research demonstrates that these patterns can and do change. • There is no pleasure in it, or sex feels mechanical. Sometimes things don't work well when you do have sex, or you hate the body you are living in. Let me put my thirty years of helping couples and teaching sex at a graduate level work for you. Become closer, work through a trauma past, and make sex become alive and pleasurable again. • You've have, or are about to consult a lawyer about getting a divorce, but wonder if Last Shot Couples Therapy could help. Did you know the severity of the problems have little relationship to the outcome of a marriage 5 years later? The majority of couples who had serious difficulties, like affairs, job loss, or intense arguments labeled themselves as "happy" 5 years later? They were tougher than their problems. Are you? Would you like to be? • You think so differently. It hard to relate. Aspergers, Trauma history, even Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder present very different perspectives. One is an artist, the other a scientist. But the fights might seem to be around parenting, but they are actually about world views. I work with couples who "think differently." Perhaps they come from different cultures. Or the same culture but now live in the USA. Choose a psychologist who respects these real differences in perspectives or cognitive processing, and is enthusiastic about making the love relationship work for you.

I have specialized in working with couples for over thirty years. During that time, I have treated hundreds of couples; written books, articles and chapters about couples therapy; given over ninety workshops and professional seminars at conferences, mental health agencies and academic settings, including Harvard Medical School and Smith College School for Social Work; offered case consultation on couples therapy to local agencies and to therapists individually and in small groups; and been interviewed for articles in Men’s Health, McCall’s and Marie Claire magazines, local newspapers and the Baltimore Sun. I conduct sex therapy and individual psychotherapy with adults, including the use of EMDR. I offer consultation to therapists locally and by telephone. I provide treatment with a recently-developed modification of EMDR for behavioral addictions, including: sexual addictions; gambling; compulsive shopping, eating and internet use, including internet pornography; playing computer games; and repetitive re-engagement in unsatisfying or harmful relationships. I do not offer treatment for alcohol or substance addictions at this time.