Richard’s clinical training and ongoing education in psychotherapy have taught him to see each person as a member of a family system—their family of origin. Each individual is further influenced by earlier generations of family members from whom one inherited both conscious and unconscious attributes or issues. The early events and relationships of a person’s life also play a major role in the development of a sense of self and ability to relate to others. Richard thus considers the transgenerational family perspective along with one’s early life experiences to help understand the meaning and source of one’s present emotional pain, and to identify the obstacles to living a more fulfilling life.

Richard views the work of psychotherapy as a process of working with these very obstacles that prevent one from experiencing health, balance and inner connection. These obstacles can also be responsible for unhealthy patterns or reactions, which prevent a person from handling situations appropriately or meeting one’s needs. As the obstacles are removed and symptoms begin to shift, a greater sense of wholeness and integrity is experienced.

How do these obstacles get resolved? In psychotherapy, talking about one’s problems and symptoms, discovering their sources, and changing the behaviors and mindsets that maintain them, can be transformative. But for many people, especially those who have experienced traumatic events, talking about their problems directly may not be sufficient to resolve them. Often times it is just too painful to deal with the traumatic events directly, because doing so triggers a state of hyperarousal or increased symptoms of the trauma, as if one’s life or wellbeing were again being threatened.

The latest research in neurobiology has helped us understand that when we experience a life-threatening event, a trauma, it is the animal instincts—the fight, flight or freeze responses—which are activated. It is this same part of the brain that is reactivated with direct or indirect reminders of the original trauma. This is why so many people avoid talking about the traumatic event—because it again triggers all the unpleasant symptoms, which they continue to experience as life threatening. Gradually, through psychotherapy, the habitual mental, emotional and physical responses to the traumatic memory change, and one learns to use their mind to discern past from present experience, interpret the emotional and physical activation differently, and choose different, more adaptive responses. As the traumatic past becomes resolved and integrated into a greater sense of wholeness, a feeling of empowerment, reconnection with oneself and others, and freedom to make choices and live life more fully becomes possible.