[NOVA Filter] Please recommend a therapist who specializes in relationships or women's issues in the Northern Virginia area.
October 17, 2010 1:41 PM Subscribe
[NOVA Filter] Please recommend a therapist who specializes in relationships or women's issues in the Northern Virginia area.
Please provide recommendations for a therapist (PHd, LSW, etc.) in the Northern Virginia area who focuses on women's issues and relationship issues. I'm looking for someone who is insightful, intuitive and does not stare at you blankly and merely repeat what you say back to you. If you can share any details about your recommendations, such as the person's approach, style, and how they may have helped you or someone you know, that would be helpful too. Thanks in advance!
Please provide recommendations for a therapist (PHd, LSW, etc.) in the Northern Virginia area who focuses on women's issues and relationship issues. I'm looking for someone who is insightful, intuitive and does not stare at you blankly and merely repeat what you say back to you. If you can share any details about your recommendations, such as the person's approach, style, and how they may have helped you or someone you know, that would be helpful too. Thanks in advance!
Oh, let me endorse my former therapist, who I absolutely adored. His name is Alan McFarland, and he's just off Backlick Road in Annandale. I saw quite a few therapists as a teenager and young adult, and he remains far and away my favorite, because he was so incredibly insightful. In our sessions, he would regularly crystallize an insight in ways I never would have thought of, but which were incredibly incisive and helpful. I know he saved me years worth of struggle by helping me see where I had been and was headed and being able to help me deal effectively with the past and equip me for the future.
One of my favorite things I ever heard from him was this: I said that he must get tired of listening to complainers all day, and he said that he was honored to be able to listen to the people who came to him, because they were the brave ones, looking for solutions and understanding. It was such a total turnabout of my assumptions, and he totally embodied that belief.
I saw him in the mid-to-late 90s as a young adult who had left college. I was struggling with ending a bad relationship and feeling like I was an adult but still feeling very much like I hadn't found my place in the world. He helped me understand and deal with the fact that the period of life I was going through was just as tumultuous as adolescence, but less acknowledged to be so.
Additionally, I called him up a couple years ago, when I was going through a really bad patch dealing with serious illness. He called me back between his next two appointments, and after ten years remembered immediately what sort of work I had been doing and the new boyfriend I started seeing while I was working with him (who is now my husband). I was flabbergasted - it was as if I had just left my last appointment. So I recommend him wholeheartedly.
posted by jocelmeow at 4:12 PM on October 17, 2010
One of my favorite things I ever heard from him was this: I said that he must get tired of listening to complainers all day, and he said that he was honored to be able to listen to the people who came to him, because they were the brave ones, looking for solutions and understanding. It was such a total turnabout of my assumptions, and he totally embodied that belief.
I saw him in the mid-to-late 90s as a young adult who had left college. I was struggling with ending a bad relationship and feeling like I was an adult but still feeling very much like I hadn't found my place in the world. He helped me understand and deal with the fact that the period of life I was going through was just as tumultuous as adolescence, but less acknowledged to be so.
Additionally, I called him up a couple years ago, when I was going through a really bad patch dealing with serious illness. He called me back between his next two appointments, and after ten years remembered immediately what sort of work I had been doing and the new boyfriend I started seeing while I was working with him (who is now my husband). I was flabbergasted - it was as if I had just left my last appointment. So I recommend him wholeheartedly.
posted by jocelmeow at 4:12 PM on October 17, 2010
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posted by decathecting at 3:27 PM on October 17, 2010