Karin Wandrei (she/her)

As a daughter of a Holocaust survivor who has actively worked on promoting an awareness of the impact of the Holocaust and its relevance to today, I have been immersed in PTSD issues my entire life. My first volunteer position in the 1970s was as a rape crisis counselor. I was there at the beginning of beginning of the child abuse awareness movement. For many years I was an administrator of programs serving children and their families involved with abuse. About half of my practice involves adult survivors of child abuse.

I work with a variety of relationship configurations, with individuals, couples and other groupings. I am sex-positive and kink friendly. I work with individuals who are heterosexual, pansexual, or LGBTQ. I have been trained up to Level 2 in the Gottman approach, which is one of the few evidence-based couples therapy approaches. This approaches involves an extensive assessment followed by a very specific treatment plan focused on the here and now experiences of the couple.

I have worked with individuals with depression throughout my career. Research indicates that for mild depression, psychotherapy alone is usually effective and for moderate depression, psychotherapy and medication is effective for most people. My criteria for referring for medication is how much the depression is impacting on your daily life, how long you have been depressed, and how much distress you have.

I believe in the importance of how we were brought up including the circumstances of our family in the broader social context as an important influence in how we are in our current lives. Trauma can impact severely on our development and adult attachment styles. In psychodynamic therapy I work on exploring with you how this impacts in your current life.

Gottman is a specified approach to work with couples that is research-based and relatively short-term. It involves a comprehensive relationship analysis that usually involves 3 sessions and then a specific treatment plan which involves helping to reinforce the strengths a couple has and addressing their challenge areas, especially in the area of communication. Therapy sessions are a lab where clients work on their issues with each other and learn how to do things differently. I teach specific skills and there often is homework. I have found that couples that follow through practicing what they have learned at home often make significant progress.

I was there at the beginning of the feminist therapy movement in the 1970's in Berkeley, CA. I remember working with other women to discover what a feminist approach to crisis/rape counseling might involve. My doctoral dissertation was a feminist analysis of women who attempt suicide. This was at a time when there was almost no research on why women made more attempts than men. The personal is political!