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Where psychological care, research, and professional education come together
Our philosophy is grounded in the belief that psychological care is most effective when it draws on the most advanced understanding of human psychology. That is why we devote resources to research and to sharing its results through the training of our clinicians and the education of the broader professional community.
The Advanced Psychology Institute is built around the discoveries and insights of Message-Centered Psychology. This framework has been developed and tested for over twenty years and offers a perspective on psychological phenomena that is beyond the reach of other approaches. Our mission is to test and advance this knowledge through research, disseminate it through education, and apply it – in combination with other, widely accepted, methods – to the treatment of mental health conditions.
You honor us by inviting us into your personal universe. We come as guests, respecting your laws, rationales, and values – to observe, understand, and help. The words good, bad, right, and wrong are excluded from our professional language. We do not impose our values: we keep them for our own universes.
We listen to your feelings, even painful ones, instead of fighting them: they are messages about not only what is happening, but what needs to be done. We treat your actions, even unwanted ones, as serving a useful purpose. We often learn more from this purpose than from a problem’s past causes, because once we uncover it together, we can look for better ways to serve it.
Psychological difficulties do not exist in a vacuum but amid problems with health, work, relationships, or the law, often in a vicious circle. That is why we believe in giving you access to a variety of professionals – a psychiatrist, a mind-body coach, a career specialist, an attorney, or other specialists your case requires – working with you in close collaboration with your therapist.
Research is the foundation of the Institute. It guides our practice, and our practice feeds further research; what we learn from each case serves the next – which may be yours. We see it as our duty to share the accumulated knowledge with the world. Teaching others and learning from them is how we keep our standards up: to stand still is to fall behind.
You probably already have an idea of what therapy is like – from movies or from your own experience. Working with us may feel different from what you expect. The difference stems from our approach, shaped by our mission, our values, and a body of knowledge built from clinical experience, from the study of existing methods, and from our own research.
When you come to us with your problem, you describe its symptoms: the anxiety, the short temper, the fatigue, the difficulties in a relationship. Neither you nor we may know what underlies those symptoms. Our job resembles that of a detective who reconstructs the whole picture from seemingly insignificant clues or that of a paleontologist who reconstructs the whole animal from a tooth and a fragment of a bone – only you can verify whether the reconstruction makes sense. To reduce your suffering, we work with the symptoms; to eliminate it – with the underlying issue.
Our first rule is that you feel comfortable and your choices respected; without that, nothing we do can work. Responsibility should not come without power: if one person makes the decisions and another has to live with the results, things go wrong. We can help you see your options and their consequences, but you always have the last word. We will never insist on our suggestions, mislead you, or hide information from you to shape your decisions. In other words, we do not push, and we do not hide.
While we take the gravity of your condition as seriously as you do, we are careful not to over-diagnose. Too heavy a label may lead to resignation or serve as an excuse to avoid responsibility – and that means giving up control of your life. We do not want you to change: we want you to learn new skills and use them to change your life.
Your first appointment will be with an intake coordinator, whose job is to learn about your problem and your situation. The coordinator is not your therapist; based on the intake information, our clinical director will recommend one to you. There is a reason we prefer it this way rather than asking you to choose from a list: a profile cannot tell you who has handled cases like yours or who can see you without a wait – we know both. The recommendation is ours; the decision, as always, is yours.
When other life stressors are intertwined with your psychological issues – a stalled job search, a legal dispute, a lifestyle-related health issue – we suggest adding the right experts to your team, to build and carry out a single, coordinated plan of action together. Since all our sessions are online, we can bring in clinicians and experts for what they know rather than where they are.
If this sounds like the help you are looking for, start by booking a free, confidential, 15-minute call with our intake coordinator, who will ask about the reason for your call, collect your contact and insurance information, and answer your questions.
Book a callYou will be matched with the clinician, or team of clinicians, whose expertise best fits your situation.
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