Timothy Lo LCSW

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is my primary treatment orientation, and one that I believe is helpful to everyone, including myself. Much of ACT is about the doing, about practice, which also means I practice in my own life. In the end it's all about how to pursue a more meaningful life, and concrete ways to get there.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the first treatment orientation I learned while I was in graduate school. I believe it has enormously beneficial applications, but also see some its limitations. This is why I tend to focus more on third-wave behavioral orientations, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. That being said, I still find the core principles of CBT extremely useful to this day.

Exposure and Response Prevention therapy (ERP) is the gold standard for OCD, due to the large body of data and research behind it's effectiveness. It can also potentially feel impersonal or dismissive if not done well. My goal is to provide people the knowledge to change their lives, tools and exercises to practice application, and maybe push them a little along the way. All of this only comes after you feel heard and understood.

I'm here to help people break the OCD cycle by helping you interact with your obsessions differently in order to reduce compulsions that end up harming you. This oftentimes involves learning some of the research behind OCD and then practicing tools and exercises in sessions but also outside of them. All of this is done to help you pursue the life you want to live, with you in the driver's seat, as opposed to OCD grabbing the steering wheel all of the time.

From the outside, depression can look like laziness. It can look the same from the inside too. I don't believe anyone suffering from depression is actually lazy, I believe they're fighting harder than most people I know just to make it through the day. I'm here to help you change how you interact with your depressive thoughts and emotions differently, so you can regain control over your actions and your life. This usually begins with us defining what matters to you and going from there.

Experiencing anxiety is oftentimes feeling as if you're in danger, emotionally, physically, or both. My goal is to help you interact with those thoughts and emotions differently, starting by helping you understand you anxiety better. From there we find concrete ways to help you act with more purpose and awareness when your anxiety shows up. Lots of practice usually follows.