Therapeutic Style

We believe therapy works best when it feels purposeful, which means everything we bring to our sessions — the questions we ask, our tone of voice, the homework we assign — is meant to bring you one step closer to your short- and long-term goals.

We use warmth, authenticity, and a sense of humor to challenge your long-standing beliefs about yourself and the world in order to help you grow.

As therapists we are active participants in sessions. We cheer, challenge, redirect, and interrupt (albeit gently) so you know we’re with you in the process and guiding you along the way.

Finally, our therapeutic style is balanced. We take a dialectical approach when working with clients. We teach our clients to balance the aspects of life that are seemingly opposite, yet exist at the same time.

At Brooke Schwartz Psychotherapy, we balance the following:

  • Therapy involves focusing on the present AND the future (and the past, too!).

    In order to plan for the future, we need to take a look at what your life looks like now. And in order to evaluate whether what you’re doing now is working, we need to consider where you want to be down the line. We’ll move between the tenses and tend to whichever of them needs us most at any given moment.

  • We have therapeutic expertise AND you're the expert on yourself.

    Our work together involves mutual trust. While you are coming to us for therapy, we are relying on your expert understanding of yourself and the world. We trust both our therapeutic skills and your innate ability to know yourself, your experience, and the systems in which you operate.

  • There’s value in structure AND flexibility.

    We collaborate with our clients on identifying their goals with the understanding that goals can — and oftentimes need to — change along the way. While it’s always nice to have a plan, we understand the importance of flexibility.

  • Our relationship is therapeutic AND it’s real.

    Research shows that the quality of the relationship between therapist and client is one of the strongest predictors of success in therapy. Our approach with clients begins with building a safe and nurturing therapeutic relationship that we can use as a proxy for how you interact with others. And, while we are therapists, we are also people who genuinely cares about your life and wellbeing.

  • Emotions can be tough to manage AND are important to feel.

    We take a curious and loving approach to our clients’ emotions. Yes, emotions can be overwhelming, scary, and unpredictable. At the same time, resisting them only gives them more power over us. We empower our clients to welcome, name, embrace, and explore their emotions while validating that the process can be incredibly uncomfortable and is most effectively and meaningfully done at our own pace.

  • Parts of your story bring up pain AND they’ve made you who you are.

    Our hope is that you come out of our work together able to embrace the story that led you to us, even if you still wish it never happened. As Pema Chödrön says, “The point is … not to try to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already.”

Why social work?

Our therapeutic style and approach are rooted in social work practice, a mutual problem solving process that focuses on individual wellbeing in a social context.

Being social workers means we are trained to explore the transactions that take place between our clients and their environments. In doing so together, we will get the richest possible picture of your experience in the world, as well as a deeper understanding of how to navigate the systems in which you operate.