Find a Therapist in Potomac, MD

My communication style is calm and personable. I empathize with and challenge the perspectives of people I work with.

My communication style is warm, collaborative, and focused on your unique needs and goals. I aim to create a safe, non-judgmental space for you to process your experiences and emotions.

Accepting new clients for in-person and virtual sessions. Are you stuck in unhealthy relationship patterns with yourself, your family, and maybe even your friends? Do you have difficulty saying “no?” Are you having difficulty with setting and maintaining boundaries that keep you emotionally safe? Unhealthy relationships can leave us heartbroken, unfulfilled, and feeling invisible. We begin to question our own enoughness! We become numb, sad, and disconnected. Sometimes we give up on relationships altogether while longing to be loved and validated. We get stuck between hurting and healing. If you are stuck, we can help. Unstuck Counseling is a therapy practice located in Laurel, MD. Our mission is to heal and eradicate the reverberating effects of trauma in the African American community. We partner with our clients to help them get unstuck! We do this by using culturally sensitive and evidence-based practices to help our clients overcome hurts and create new experiences in the context of a safe, accepting, and nonjudgmental therapeutic relationship. Email us today to schedule an appointment. We are waiting to hear from you.

Welcome! I’m so glad you are reaching out! Finding a therapist who is able to listen and understand your particular needs is key. When I meet with you for the first time, I want to learn who you are as a person. In addition to diagnosis and issues of concern, I want to know your life story. Are there patterns that recur in your life? What are your strengths? What matters to you? Once I have a good understanding, we can decide jointly what approach is likely to help you most. When you come for counseling, you want to start to feel better right away. By incorporating evidence-based coping skills from the first session, I help folks get some immediate stress relief. At the same time, we will also address any underlying issues to achieve more long-term gains.

At Starobin Counseling we focus on helping people repair and strengthen their relationships with themselves and their relationships with others. We regard relationships as central to the therapeutic process. Some challenges in life are purely personal, but most problems express themselves in the intersections people have with other people. Therapy helps people repair their inner selves, often injured by relational ruptures, and learn and practice being in relational health with one another. Therapy helps people hear themselves think, experience feelings, gain new perspectives. We help people recognize and strengthen their own vitality and resiliency so they can unlock their capacity for compassionate and meaningful connections. We are a neurodiversity-minded, neurodiversity-affirming, gender-affirming, and culturally aware and sensitive practice.

I strongly believe in your inherent ability to grow and change-- to survive neglect, hardship, and trauma and become stronger and more resilient. I help people find their strengths and learn to accept and even love their vulnerabilities. I teach coping skills and I listen intently.

My 25+ years of experience has taught me the importance of making the time to listen and understand before I start making suggestions. This involves understanding each person's life story, administering assessment tools, reviewing relevant records, and interviewing other people that my client and I agree should be involved. I believe strongly in evaluating strengths as well as pain, with my feedback emphasizing the former. I also believe in letting my clients know about what research-based treatments are available to them so that we can collaborate in experiencing transformative change ASAP. I believe in setting life-altering goals before beginning, and checking on progress as we go. My intention is to promote healing, wellness, and happiness as thoroughly and as effectively as possible. With child and teen clients, I use a variety of methods to make each person comfortable (e.g., I use magic to connect with kids and teens, referring to myself as a wizard).

Stressed? Overwhelmed? Struggling with making life decisions? Congratulations! You've taken the first step towards seeking change. Listening to intuition and addressing what distresses you is a sign of strength. Respect, empathy, support, active listening, collaboration and confidentiality are a top priority and values that guide my practice. I welcome the opportunity to work with you to uncover your inner strengths and live your life reaching towards your fullest potential. Self-discovery and awareness occur in the context of a working therapeutic relationship; reasons why I feel the fit between therapist and patient is so important. I encourage you to follow your inner voice about what feels right when searching for a therapist. Each patient and couple is unique and therefore I use an individually tailored eclectic and flexible approach integrating techniques from various modalities depending on patients' needs. I encourage individuals and couples to be active participants in their treatment enabling them to explore previously undiscovered aspects of themselves. Within the context of the therapeutic relationship, patients can explore patterns of behavior related to beliefs, attitudes and past experiences. I would be happy to speak with you during a complimentary phone consultation. I warmly welcome your call or email.

I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in Virginia. Born and raised in Iowa, I attended Iowa State University, graduating with a double major in Child, Adult, and Family Services and Spanish. I have traveled and lived in many places throughout the world, and have developed an appreciation for the differences we all have, but also the similarities that unite us. I received my master’s degree from Rutgers University. In my 18 years of work experience, I have worked supporting children, adolescents, and families. That experience includes working with trauma, depression, anxiety, school related anxiety and refusal, conflict between parents and children, involvement in the juvenile justice system, immigration stress and trauma, and crisis intervention. I have experience in child and adolescent therapy, family therapy, parenting, group therapy, and school-based mental health. I meet the child and family where they are on their journey and works collaboratively to develop realistic goals that will improve functioning in all environments. I utilize a strengths-based, solution-focused and family systems approach. I encourage children and families to share their culture and integrate the unique cultural experiences of families into treatment. I enjoy spending time outside, watching movies, reading books, and crocheting. I also enjoy various forms of exercise, like weightlifting and yoga. I enjoy watching (and sometimes playing) sports. I bring creativity and energy to my practice and am mindful and strategic about interventions used when working with children and families. Mental health is an important part of our being. Just like we eat food to feed our physical body, we must also get what we need to be mentally and emotionally resilient.

Psychotherapy can help you claim and enjoy more in your life. We can all use help in finding our way at different times in our lives. You may be ready for more happiness in your life, more satisfaction, creativity, success, confidence, peace, friendships - or greater depth to your relationships. You may not have been able to find it on your own. I have experience, training, compassion and a mindful approach that can help you develop traction on the path that is truly yours. My focus is on helping you develop your ability to see yourself, your circumstances and your challenges with a fresh eye, allowing your to create the changes in your life that you really want. To the work that we can do together, I bring over fifteen years of experience as a psychotherapist, plus a depth of understanding from my experience as a husband and father and from my experience as a firefighter and paramedic. The work that I do is not about being broken or ill; it is about being more alive: * Shifting away from negative anticipation and belief in powerlessness, toward actualizing your own authentic power and vitality * Increasing creativity in your life * Living a life infused with clarity as to the abundance available to you, on place of an expectation of scarcity * Discovering the relief and pleasure in living authentically, honestly, as the "real you" * Feeling your feelings, all of them, more fully and with less fear * Finding the pleasure of taking relationships to a deeper level; enlivening friendships and reinvigorating relationships gone stale * Moving beyond the pain of the past - physical, emotional, spiritual or otherwise; letting go of outdated, limiting ideas or beliefs about yourself and finding joy in being alive. You can do this. We'll work to get you there.

I assist clients that have endured trauma and stress. Are you looking to find relief through compassionate and effective treatment? If you are interested in finding relief from conditions that have affected your mood, your relationships, your work, andor your habits in a negative way, call or email me now. Together, we can walk the path of recovery together until you have reached your imagined destination. Let's work on overcoming intimate partner violence, anger, toxicity, infidelity, addiction, self-hatred, codependency, shame, isolation, fear, neediness, grief, etc... ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

I help people change through developing a greater awareness for all of themselves, which allows them greater resources to deal with the struggles that they are experiencing. As clients develop greater awareness of themselves, including their wants, needs, emotions, and ways of relating to others, they tend to develop a wider range of choices in their lives. They learn to recognize what they do that keeps them from being their best selves. They also learn to tap into and use their own internal wisdom to help guide their choices, developing a greater authenticity in their lives. In relationships, couples and families develop greater intimacy and ability to use conflict to further their relationship through their greater awareness of themselves and their other family members. People I work with also learn with guidance and coaching to experiment with new ways of being with themselves and others in the world, which furthers their growth and development into more happy, fulfilled human beings. As an experienced psychotherapist and former graduate psychology professor, I have developed a wide range of expertise in helping others. I am honored and humbled by the courage and spirit of the people I work with and the struggles they face. I feel privileged to help people come to terms with pain, face challenges, and change their lives.