Will Joel Friedman, Ph.D. — Contributor

Will Joel Friedman, Ph.D. is a seasoned clinician with experience working with adults, couples, families, adolescents and older children since 1976. His aim is to understand people's challenges and collaborate in setting an achievable vision in the present. His practice is about inhabiting this present moment, witnessing and "buying out" of the ego-mind's unworkable patterns, desensitizing root emotional charges, and gaining effective tools to thrive in the world. Licensed as a psychologist in California since 1987 (CA Lic. No.: PSY 10092), his major focus is Presence-centered therapy. Presence-centered therapy is a conscious attuning to the richness of this present moment (sometimes called mindfulness or wakefulness) along with witnessing, that is, observing what the mind is up to now by looking from outside of it. His practice is centered upon inhabiting this present moment, witnessing and "buying out" of the ego-mind's unworkable patterns, desensitizing root emotional charges, and gaining effective tools to thrive in the world. He specializes in providing therapy for adults facing anxiety, significant stress, work issues, relationship challenges and depression as well as couples with marital issues, communication issues, self-defeating behavior, divorce mediation, co-parenting and pre-marital counseling. Core to his approach is installing, building and developing strong internal resources, an enhanced capacity to hold, bear and tolerate strong emotions, and highly adaptive tools to better thrive in the world.

He perceives people as multi-faceted bio-psycho-social-spiritual Beings ever adapting and evolving in the only time that exists—this invaluable present moment. The mind, body and world are all undivided expressions of all-encompassing, seamless, non-separate Consciousness. His practice stands on three key elements. First is inhabiting this present moment and watching the mind from outside it to see what it is up to now. Presence and witnessing help empower you to first see and then "buy out" of the mind's unworkable patterns. The vision he brings to therapy is a fundamental optimism in our capacity as human beings to adaptively change, grow and evolve. Our plasticity of attitude and behavior can allow us to be successful and thrive in the empirical world as well as inhabit, express and embody our authentic liberated self or True Self.

Secondly, inquiry approaches (such as deconstructing beliefs and false identities) coupled with mind-body approaches (like EMDR, sensory awareness/focusing, hypnosis, taking in the good) and cognitive, systems and psychodynamic approaches greatly help desensitize root emotional charges associated with incomplete traumas and the survival decisions made that tend to drive unworkable emotional and behavioral patterns.

Third and core to this work is installing, building and developing strong internal resources that are immediately useable along with highly adaptive tools to better thrive in the world. Developing an enhanced capacity to hold, bear and tolerate strong emotions along with effective coping skills to powerfully assist this capacity are central to robust transformation. When combined, these three core approaches can be amazingly synergistic, supportive, powerful and effective in enhancing the therapeutic enterprise and healing process of wholeness. The hallmark of this vision is facilitating the entrance of clients into the organic space of empowerment, that is, being their own authority, in the now.

His vision for effective therapy is for clients to unlearn their learned limitations, have an emotionally satisfying and completing experience, and have the many positive, life-affirming outcomes of our work be sustaining. May this transformative work open clients up to a full creative expression of who one truly is. Free the ego, and you are free. Pause without thinking; simply look and see for yourself. He has completed a book with the working title of "Awakening to Sanity: Being Sane in an Insane World—A Traveler's Guide" and has numerous excerpts on his website. He is on the editorial board of the on-line professional publication Paradoxica: Journal of Nondual Psychology (http://www.paradoxica.ca/). He is in private practice in Pleasanton, California and is available for business consulting, business training and executive coaching (detail on his home page).  He can be reached directly through his website www.willjoelfriedman.com (featuring over 215 articles, 27 YouTube videos and pages upon pages of highly practical annotated resource links) or by email at [email protected].


The following are Will's contributions to MentalHelp.Net

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