Ed Loewenton, M.A.

There is a good chance you are looking for therapy to help dealing with one of these:
* A sense of isolation, not belonging, loneliness, conflicts with your partner, parents, children - those people who seem to hurt you the most - your close attachments.
* A sense that your autonomy, your right to make your own decisions and determine your own path, is denied to you.
* Challenges to your physical safety and health.
We all experience daily challenges to our sense of personal effectiveness and identity, safety, and belonging. When our efforts to deal with these stresses are not working, we can experience behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that are distressing or even disabling. This can be expressed as angry feelings or behavior, uncontrolled anxiety and fears, or unproductive or harmful ways to deal with these emotions.
I offer psychotherapy: Healing the problems of emotion, thinking, relationships, and behavior that can make life so difficult.

RECOGNIZING THAT THE SUFFERING OF EACH CLIENT IS UNIQUE IN HIS OR HER OWN WAY,
I choose my therapeutic methods from a broad array of theory and practice to fit the special needs of each. A course of therapy is formulated for each client. Through the assignment of homework, each client is empowered with a share of the therapeutic work. In this way, each client gets the majority of the credit for his or her successful emergence into a life free of suffering.
I blend cognitive, psychodynamic-attachment, neuroscientific, and body-centered methods, such as breathwork, meditation, and mindfulness. Attention is paid to diet, exercise, and healthy sleep schedules; each of these three plays a critical role in establishing a solid base for improvements in emotional state, the development of more effective and less troublesome behavioral habits, and improvement in important relationships.
My thinking and methods are based on the latest scientific data and the oldest traditions of the workings of the mind. I am resolutely optimistic and focused on your success. Let this be the time you say good-bye to your problems, and move forward, free of the burdens of the past.

MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE MIND AND ITS PROBLEMS started with the thorough and demanding education in scientific psychology as a psych major at the University of Pennsylvania. As a grad student at Penn, I continued this research-oriented experience. during my time at Penn, I published two experimental studies and completed a third, which was successful but never published. I continue my studies by continuous reading and attending seminars online and at the UVM Psychiatry Department's Friday Grand Rounds presentations.
My first experience with behavioral problems took place many years ago at a State Hospital in Pennsylvania, where I found that the basic principles learned in school could be be translated into effective therapies. These methods were still largely experimental, so I was inventing a treatment for each case!
All this time, I knew that I wanted to understand the role that brain systems played in psychopathology. I waited quite a number of years until the neuroscience caught up to my need to know, read extensively, wrote some papers (not published). and re-entered the academic world in 2001, in a clinically-oriented program.
I first did "office-based" therapy in 2001.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED:
* It's not "genetic". It might be in part "epigenetic", which is the the environment determining which genes are "switched on".
* Mental illness is - almost always - a result of trying to cope with challenges to attachment, autonomy, or physical safety with an inadequate tool set. Early trauma - threats to these three - often results in incomplete psychic development and inadequate means of coping. Sever early trauma can lead to severe pathology, which, at worst, can be seen in changes to brain structure and function. We are hard-wired to be healthy, with few exceptions. Early interference with mental growth can turn this development the wrong way.
* What are traditionally regarded as entirely physical illnesses are often the result of severe stress on the immune system, which has a two-way causal interaction with susceptible body systems, such as skin, lungs, digestive system. Stress can cause illness and pathology in biological systems; these can cause what are interpreted as medical pathology.
* Psychiatric drugs can help in an emergency or suppress symptoms, but they cannot cure. There are currently no methods of "cure" that do not involve psychotherapy. The brain always adapts to inputs coming from outside the body, so that dosage increases while the effects diminish. But, incredible as it seems, speech (as from parents) can cause psychopathology and can also repair, it as in talking therapy.
****************************************
My fees start at $125 per session, $150 for couples. You cannot use your insurance to pay for my services, but I have an accommodating "sliding scale" program. If you are in economic difficulty, we can discuss what you can afford.

Set up a free phone consultation by emailing me at ed@loewenton.org . Let's talk about what you need and how I can help!