Dr. Jaelline Jaffe - Psychotherapist Los Angeles Marriage and Family Therapist Los Angeles Beverly Hills Century City San Fernando Valley Sherman Oaks Studio City Tarzana Woodland Hills Calabasas Hidden Hills

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Read Dr. Jaffe’s co-authored book, The Language of Emotional Intelligence. It will help improve your communication and the quality of all your relationships!

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ARTICLES BY DR. JAFFE

Transforming Life’s Lemons

ASSISTING ADOLESCENTS

FINDING AND WORKING WITH A PSYCHOTHERAPIST

ARTICLES BY DR. JAFFE ON OTHER WEBSITES
It is my great honor to work on two wonderful mental health websites that offer assistance to both professionals and the lay reader. I am the coordinator for www.HealingResources.info, which provides information on recognizing, preventing, and healing the effects of emotional stress that may be traumatic, even if not initially identified as such. And as Mental Health Editor for www.helpguide.org, I have had the opportunity to research and write dozens of articles that receive literally many thousands of hits each month. Some of these articles have been reprinted or used by others in their own research on the subjects of interest. Rather than reprinting any of them here, I invite you to visit these outstanding community service sites, where you will find clear and easily-read information on more than 150 topics.

I am also pleased to have a recently published article written especially for counseling trainees and interns, to help in developing their counseling skills. That article, Psychotherapy: A Mystery Puzzle in Progress, appears in the March/April 2005 issue of The Therapist, the publication of CAMFT (California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists).

ASSISTING ADOLESCENTS
One of my passions is in helping young people sort out the confusion in their lives. Here is an article of mine that appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of the Student Assistance Journal:

Measuring the Future
By Jaelline Jaffe, Ph.D.

There is an old Chinese proverb: “Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand.” Kids are often visual and kinesthetic learners. Talking at them, or even with them, is usually not nearly as effective as getting them involved in something concrete before going to the abstract.

In conducting a counseling program for adolescents, I hear an unfortunate number of them talking about their lives without hope for the future or as if they’ve given up on living. This girl feels like a failure because she doesn’t have a boyfriend. That boy is drinking and using heavily. Those over there are running with a tagging crew or a gang. Some cannot imagine living to age 25.

To move these young people toward visualizing long and productive lives, I engage them in an activity. Many kids are strong visual and kinesthetic learners, and I find it is much easier to connect with them and to get an idea across if they can see it and experience it, than if they just hear it.

In group or individually, I ask them, “Who is the oldest person in your family?” or “How old was your grandpa when he died?” The answer is usually around 75. Then I lay two yardsticks end to end, saying, “Let’s imagine each inch represents one year. How many years do we have here? Right — 72. So if your grandpa was 75, he lived longer than the length of these two yardsticks.

Let’s see, you are 14 (or whatever their age is). So that’s right here on the measure. Hmm, just over one foot, and there are six feet here, so you are only about 1/6 the age of your grandpa. You know that longevity tends to run in the family, so it looks like you have a long way to go unless you get hit by a car or a bullet or get really sick or something. Did you ever ask grandpa what his life was like at 14, whether he had any idea how long he’d be around or what kinds of things he thought might happen in his life?”

Just going this far with the activity can have a big impact. I have seen that proverbial light go on, when students actually see the length of their lives laid out before them.

From there, we often go to another activity, creating a timeline. First, a sample is drawn on the board or a sheet of paper, to give them the general idea of the project. Working independently, they draw a horizontal line across the middle of a sheet of paper, at least 8.5 inches by 14 inches or larger. The left end is their birth and the right end is the present. Then they add perpendicular lines above and below the timeline. Lines going up are for positive experiences and down are for negative ones. A shorter line indicates a good or bad event that made a relatively small impact on their lives, while a longer line in either direction denotes something that had more of an impact on their lives. Each of these lines is labeled to show what it represents: starting kindergarten, getting a pet, a sister’s birth, going to the hospital, moving to a different school, etc. If desired, drawings can be used in addition to or instead of words to identify each event.

These timelines are then shared with the group, with each person describing as much (or as little) as they feel comfortable disclosing. In this way, they discover commonalities as well as differences in their perspectives. For example, Dad left could be a huge negative for one person but a positive for another. At the end of the session, collect their papers.

The following session, the papers are returned to them. Now they are instructed to work either on the back or on a new sheet and draw another timeline, this one starting with the present and projecting into the future, to the age of the oldest person in their family. (This is an important instruction, because otherwise, some will show their life ending at age 21 or so. Another extension of this activity is to discuss what choices or chances could lead them to live a longer or shorter time.) Again, they make lines indicating what they anticipate will be the high and low points of their lives if they were to live to that age.

This, of course, is more difficult for some than for others and leads to discussions about dreams, goals and anticipations. A natural follow up is a series of activities on goal setting and steps to achieve goals.

FINDING AND WORKING WITH A PSYCHOTHERAPIST

Two friends are talking over a couple of beers. One says to the other, “So what did your therapist say about that problem?” The other one replies, “Are you kidding? I would never tell my therapist about THAT!”

The point of seeing a therapist is to get some help and a different perspective on whatever is going on in your life. The most important factor in choosing a therapist is finding one you WILL tell about the issues in your life. All the research on psychotherapy reaches the same conclusion: of all the dozens of approaches, the best predictor of success in therapy is NOT the theory, but the relationship, the therapeutic alliance, between the client/patient and the therapist. So find a therapist you are comfortable with, one who listens attentively, is non-judgmental, gives good feedback, does not simply give you advice, but helps you decide for yourself what your best course of action will be.

If you live in the Los Angeles area and you like what you have read in this website, I hope you will contact me. Otherwise, here are some guidelines to finding a therapist in your area:

1. Find a psychotherapist:

if you know someone who is seeing a therapist, ask for a referral
check with a local university for referrals
ask your medical doctor or your insurance company for referrals
call a referral group, such as 1-800-THERAPIST or the Southern California Psychotherapy Referral Service, or another referral group in your area (check the yellow pages or online)
contact APA, AHP, AAMFT, CAMFT, or another professional organization

2. Once you have a name, call and ask if you can talk for about 5 minutes on the phone before making an appointment.

If the person is unwilling to spend any time with you later that day or the next day, it is an indication that you might not get the kind of service you want from that person.

3. Give a very brief list of your main concerns and ask if that therapist has experience with those issues. Ask how he or she would approach helping you.

There are dozens of theoretical approaches, and each therapist has an individual style, so you are looking for a sense of whether this person’s style feels right for you.

4. If you do not feel comfortable after speaking with this person, call someone else.

As in any relationship, some people work well together and others do not – the person’s licenses or training may or may not have anything to do with how well you “fit.”

5. If you do feel comfortable after this brief conversation, ask about fees/insurance, and then make an appointment.

Be sure you have directions and give yourself time to get there, so you won’t be short-changing yourself for time – therapists usually allow 45-50 minutes per session, unless they have a longer intake session, and you’ll need extra time to fill out paperwork before your session. Be sure you bring insurance information and payment for this session, unless other arrangements were made on the phone.

6. Your first session will give you a sense of how it feels to work with this person. However, most of the time will likely be spent with the therapist trying to gather information, and you may or may not feel like you made progress.

The most important question for you at this point is whether you feel like you will be able to talk with this person. Unless you have a very bad reaction to your session, you should probably return for at least 2-3 more times before making a decision about working with him or her.

7. Therapy is a partnership. You might not like every minute of every session (and sometimes you might be very unhappy about a session), but overall, you should feel like you are gaining some new awareness, insights, skills, or understandings, and you should feel like your life is improving as a result.

You need to be actively involved in your sessions, and in between sessions, to get the most from the venture. And the therapist needs to be attentive and actively involved as well. However, the therapeutic relationship is NOT a personal or sexual one. Any inappropriate suggestions or actions on the part of the therapist are a reason for immediately terminating the relationship – and for reporting the therapist to the licensing agency.

8. If you do not feel you can work with this person, then call someone else.

There is no use in spending your time and money if you do not work well together.

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