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Welcome

Meet the Therapist

Services

Resources

Services

We offer help regarding many of the emotional needs that often consume many people in their day-to-day activities. If you find you’re struggling to control your anger and grief, or experience anxiety from abuse, we encourage you to seek help with Robert Fleischman, MS, NCC, LPC, LCPC, and turn your life around. 

Adolescent and Adult Psychotherapy
Individual and Family Counseling
Couples Counseling
Certified EMDR Therapist
Anger Management, Grief and Loss
Physical, Emotional and Sexual Abuse
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Traumatic Emotional Distress
Anxiety and Depression
Counseling Services for Children 12 Years and Up

Anger Management
The goal of anger management training is to learn to distinguish between real and imaginary danger. A situation may arise that feels dangerous or threatening. If that situation really is dangerous – say a car is coming at you – then it’s appropriate to make an emergency response, like running for the curb. It’s important to be able to make such an emergency response. When it’s a response to a real danger, it can save your life. Then again, suppose that someone is rude to you, or that they make an excessive demand on you. Nothing life-threatening is going on, and the sky is not falling. But for reasons the individual does not understand, she or he becomes enraged. It’s as if there were an unspoken belief, something like, “I’m in great danger,” and then the person makes an emergency response when there is no emergency. In a case (for instance) where someone makes an unreasonable request, it does not mean that one needs to “go ballistic”. The best response might be as simple as saying, “Sorry, that won’t be possible,” or “I’m sure we’re both reasonable people, let’s find another way.”

Anger is a normal human (and animal) emotion. It is not wrong or bad to feel angry. However, it’s important to not allow anger to turn into rage. There is a structure in the brain, the amygdala (which has been called the “smoke alarm of the brain”) that will trigger an emergency response if it perceives grave danger. That’s fine if there is any real anger. But the amygdala may go off – like a smoke alarm – when there is no actual danger. What is called for is to assess the situation and say, “I’m not in any real danger. I can handle this,” and make an appropriate and rational response instead of a rage reaction. In my practice, I use EMDR (more on that later), relaxation training and cognitive therapy to help my clients find new ways to deal with challenging situations.

Abuse
Abuse, whether physical, emotional or sexual, has a way of hurting one’s ability to trust. An incest victim once told me that the only thing worse than being raped was having been raped by someone she had trusted. To make matters worse, there is a tendency to blame the victim, and to make the victim feel responsible as opposed to the perpetrator of the abuse. If an adult or teenager is sexually assaulted, they are often told they were “asking for it” because of how they were dressed. Or, they are told they must have been behaving provocatively (etc.). Such an attitude (we therapists call it “blaming the victim”) is inexcusable. If the victim is a child, then no matter what that child may have done, it is the adult’s responsibility to protect the child from harm, and not to be the cause of harm.

Children who have been, or are being abused, often do not tell anyone. They may even keep it a secret until adulthood. It is not unusual for victims to wait until age 40, or even longer, before coming into the office for help. Feelings of shame and wrongdoing may cause a child to fear being sent away were they to tell. Fear of not being believed is often another deterrent to asking for help. All too often, when a child tells a parent that another family member is hurting them, they are not believed, but are told they are lying. If the child goes to his or her mother, for example, to say that (again, as an example) the stepfather is touching them, the mother may be unable to allow herself to believe it because of something called “cognitive dissonance.” This means that if she were to believe what her child has said then she would have to leave her husband or boyfriend on whom she has become financially and emotionally dependent. In other families, the perpetrator may threaten harm of one kind or another if the child were to tell. Even as an adult, he or she may keep the abuse a secret for years before finally seeking help. There is nothing unusual about that. There will come a time that is “right” for getting help.

Trauma
We often hear that there are two responses to being confronted with danger: fight or flight. To take, once again, the example of an oncoming car, an instantaneous decision is made to get out of the way: in other words, to flee. After all, you can’t fight with a car. If confronted with an attacker that the individual believes she or he can handle, then the decision may be to fight. If not, then the decision will probably be to run away.

But really, there are not merely two possible responses to danger, but three: fight, flight or freeze. The freeze response occurs when neither fight nor flight are possible. A child who is being abused by an adult – whether physically, emotionally or sexually – will very likely go into the freeze state. In other words, they will do nothing. While this may be the safest thing to do at the time, the problem is that the emotions – the fear they felt at the time – will also be frozen, and not expressed. The frozen emotions can remain in this state indefinitely until the time comes when the person comes out of the freeze state. That could take weeks, months or years. When he or she does come out of the freeze state, they will be experiencing the same mixture of emotions – say fear, anger and terror – as when they went into it. The saying, “time heals all wounds” does not apply here! The advice to “just get over it – it’s been a long time!” is not helpful.

Trauma can be the result of abuse – physical, emotional and sexual. It can result from being involved in a natural disaster or an auto accident, and it can affect those who assist the victims of these events, such as police, firefighters and EMS / EMT technicians. And, as we all know by now, military servicemen and servicewomen in combat suffer from emotional trauma. In my practice, I work with trauma victims, whether the trauma occurred in the distant past, or just recently. Psychotherapy – the “talking cure” – is helpful, but by itself is not enough. As a certified EMDR therapist, I use the accelerated information-processing model to increase the effectiveness of the therapy and shorten the time required for its completion.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a condition that is diagnosed when an individual has been in a situation where they believed that they were about to be killed or seriously injured, and later developed symptoms that often include flashbacks (recollections of what happened that are so vivid that it seems as if the event were happening all over again). These include nightmares, sleep difficulty and an exaggerated startle response (first noticed in war veterans and formerly referred to as “shell shock’). Other symptoms include memory difficulty, avoidance of anything that might bring the traumatic event to mind, and feeling detached or estranged from others.

Whether or not trauma meets the diagnostic criteria for PTSD or not, EMDR is usually indicated as an effective treatment.

What is EMDR?
EMDR is a treatment method, originally developed for the treatment of distressing memories, which was subsequently found to be effective in the treatment of trauma, such as PTSD, grief, and other psychological distress. While it does not replace the “talking cure” (a trusting relationship between client and therapist is still the most important part of therapy), EMDR does shorten the time required for therapy, and in fact makes possible a successful treatment in many instances where a satisfactory resolution of the problem might not have otherwise been possible.

For a full explanation of EMDR, please visit the website of the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA) at
http://www.emdria.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=l&subarticleemdr=56

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