FAQ

Office hours are 9 am to 5 pm on Saturdays.

Teletherapy hours are 9 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday. 

Yes. I accept the following insurances:

• Aetna
• AllSavers UHC
• Allied Benefit Systems – Aetna
• Beacon Health Options
• Christian Brothers Services – Aetna
• Cigna
• Harvard Pilgrim
• Health Plans Inc.
• Health Scope – Aetna
• Meritain
• Nippon
• Oscar
• Oxford Health Plans
• Surest (Formerly Bind)
• Trustmark Health Benefits – Aetna
• Trustmark Health Benefits – Cigna
• Trustmark Small Business Benefits – Aetna
• UHC Student Resources
• UMR
• United Healthcare Shared Services
• UnitedHealthcare Global

I will not deal directly with your insurance company. However, on request I will provide you with a Superbill that lists each session’s date, time, duration, and charge. You can bring the Superbill which shows that you paid for the session in full to your behavioral health insurer, which may or may not reimburse you depending on its policies and rules regarding visits to out-of-network providers.

The best way to make an appointment is to call me at (916) 281-9256 or email me at harvey@authenticlifetherapies.com.

The length of time depends on a variety of factors that include: the level of emotional stability, the complexity of your issue, the number of issues you want to work on, whether you are in crisis, your capacity to trust a therapist, the presence of ambivalence about being in therapy, your level of motivation and determination to achieve your stated goal, and whether you do the recommended exercises and tasks at home.

I can say that my clients typically show significant progress within two to three months of therapy and that I am unlike therapists who generally take one year or more to get to that place. Lastly, clients need to know they have an unconditional right to suspend or stop therapy at any time and for any reason. However, sometimes your therapist will caution you against premature discontinuation of therapy.

Yes, this occurs very frequently. I view tears as a helpful way to release pent-up emotions and create space within you for healing. Remarkably tears can reset a dysfunctional nervous system in healthy ways not fully understood by neuroscience.

My hunch is that tears help link up mind and body in clients who have a long history of repressing trauma and/or emotional pain.

No. Clients should not lie to or mislead their therapist, but it is wholly within their rights to keep certain matters private. A good illustration is that clients do not have to work on all their issues with one therapist at one time.

You get to select the issue(s) you wish to address with your chosen therapist while reserving other issues for a later time. Some clients have two therapists, one for individual work with me and another for couples counseling.

Therapy can be highly beneficial. For some people at some points in their lives, it is, in my view, the difference between staying miserable, stuck, and hopeless or moving through and beyond old problems and conflicts to a new life that is measurably healthier, happier, and more satisfying.

I am a trauma therapist. Based on my training and clinical experience, I can confidently say that for people who have endured significant trauma and developed complex PTSD as children or PTSD as adults, therapy can be of enormous help. Even if it does not eliminate all symptoms for all time, therapy can significantly decrease over-reactivity and irritability while bringing about significant improvements in mood, sleep, daily functioning, and the capacity for friendship and intimacy.

Trauma therapy risks being triggered by revisiting old memories of being abused or feeling abandoned due to emotional neglect. Although it is theoretically possible for a client to “freak out” from remembering a past trauma, this outcome is infrequent. This is because well-trained therapists like me spend a great deal of time teaching clients how to feel safe and keep themselves safe before trauma therapy begins. I have never had a single client freak out or become unglued in my practice.

Aside from teaching clients how to stay safe, I monitor them very carefully during experiences when they revisit their past. If I see any signs of acute distress, I will stop the exercise and ground the client before she/he/they suffer any serious emotional disturbance.

There is only one way to tell – have an initial session with me. The purpose of an initial session is for us to get to know each other, for you to ask questions of me that pertain to my background and approach to therapy, and for me to gather information on the nature and history of the problem you seek my help in solving.

By the end of the initial session, I will have an excellent idea of whether I can help you, and both of us will have a clear sense of whether we are a good fit in terms of personality and working style. You are not obligated to remain as my client if you did not like how the first session went. Since clients who show up for the initial session have typically screened me by reviewing my website or taking part in a free phone consult, I find we usually hit it off and continue to work together.

No. I am a secular counselor who does not ask about religious views or impose my spiritual beliefs upon clients. At one point in my past, I was an interfaith chaplain, and I feel comfortable working with people of all faiths. However, you need to know that my approach to helping clients resolve emotional pain is psychotherapeutic, not religious.

If you do have strong Christian or other religious beliefs that you want your therapist to discuss and incorporate into your therapy sessions, I suggest that you look elsewhere for therapy.

Yes. I will not reveal anything you tell me to anyone else without your voluntary consent, except for highly specific legal situations in California statutes regulating psychotherapy practice.

The following are the most common situations: You tell me you are going to kill yourself or an identifiable individual or group; you tell me that you are abusing a child or older adult or know of such abuse being carried out by another; or a court of law orders me to provide a copy of your treatment records over my objection and your objection, in which case I will give the court only those records that most narrowly meet the court’s specific needs for what is in your records. Should a court schedule a hearing on whether I must disclose a portion of your confidential treatment records, it is best to get a lawyer to represent you who is skilled and experienced in these matters.

I enjoy relating with clients in the safe environment created by confidentiality, developing a close working alliance, helping them increase self-awareness and grow, change, and evolve as people in the ways they most want.

I love to laugh and find that clients do, too. Therefore, I use humor to teach clients, lighten the atmosphere, and help them see their idols have clay feet and that the monsters under their beds are imaginary, not real. Humor can take away some of the power of the people (both living and dead) that my clients fear.

I am well-versed not only in psychology, but also in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience. I understand how brains function, how they wire up in childhood under environmental influences, and how – using neuroplasticity – we can work together to change your brain wiring as an adult. Changing the wiring means that I can help you unlearn distorted ideas and bad habits and develop accurate ideas about yourself, others, and the world as you develop good habits.

Yes, quite a few times. I have been in individual therapy, group therapy, and couples counseling. In addition, I have been in primal therapy, hypnosis, art therapy, and trauma therapies such as IFS, EMDR, somatic attachment, and hypnosis.

Some of these experiences were for personal growth and some for purposes of professional skill development. I have even undergone Shamanic journeys and a guided journey utilizing MDMA and psilocybin. By experiencing different kinds of therapies and learning more about myself, I am better able to help you.

I went to Yale University as an undergraduate, majoring in philosophy, and then to Georgetown University Law Center. After many years of practicing law in San Francisco and Oakland, I returned to school to become a mental health counselor.

While raising my son, I obtained an M.S. with honors in mental health counseling from Capella University online.

After receiving my M.S. degree, I went through many supervised internships helping clients with problems such as trauma, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, drug addiction, social injustice, and racism.

After taking and passing the National Clinical Mental Health Counselors Exam, I received my license as a professional clinical counselor here in California. During my internships and after receiving my LPCC license, I have taken many types of training, primarily in trauma therapies.

During my internships, I took extensive notes, but it interfered with my ability to focus on, observe, and converse interactively with my clients. I take notes very rarely these days and generally only to obtain important names and dates in the client’s life.

After the initial session, the law requires me to make what is called a treatment plan, and after that, I must make progress notes to record the most important events of the client’s session. These records are all confidential and only released with the client’s consent or by order of the court.