COVID-19 UPDATE:
We are currently seeing and accepting clients via phone or video during the shelter-in-place mandate. Please call (510) 649-9818 for more information.
Therapy Service Fee: Are based on a sliding scale and based on gross family income. Payment for psychotherapy services is made at each session unless other arrangements are made with the therapist.
Blue Oak Therapy Center has a 24-hour cancellation policy. Appointments cancelled less than 24 hours prior will be charged the regular fee.
Fees may be partially covered by some insurance plans. Check with your insurance provider to find out if you qualify under your plan
Therapy at Blue Oak can help with: Depression and anxiety, Grief and loss, Intimacy and relationships, Trauma, Addictions, Parent-child conflict, Eating and body issues, Building self-esteem, Deepening spirituality
Child therapy can address: Separation/Divorce and other family changes, Trauma that the child experienced or witnessed, Grief and loss of loved ones, Recovery from child abuse (physical, sexual, or psychological), School or academic problems, Sleeping or eating problems, Difficulties in relating to other children or adults, Aggression, irritability, anger, Behavior problems, Depression, anxiety, and other emotional distress
Adolescent therapy often integrates both play therapy and talk therapy, and is tailored around each adolescent’s particular needs and capacity
There is often a gap between a teenager’s emotional and intellectual development and capacity. The clinic offers Sand Tray Therapy for adolescents (as well as for children and adults) to specifically address this gap.
Other ways to work with adolescents:
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is a modality of therapy focused on thoughts and behaviors. Through talking, thinking and planning together, the therapist may help a teenager with facing specific stressors, phobias, or difficulties.
Therapy focused on specific issues, such as substance abuse, sexual or other risk-taking, aggression towards peers or family members, truancy and more.
Family Therapists offer:
Developing, with family members, a family history which identifies the emotional strategies a family uses to cope with difficult emotional transitions, such as divorce, separation, loss of a family member, and trauma.
Identifying the familial rules and roles that family members have followed with or without their conscious awareness.
Improving communication between family members.
Strengthening healthy relational patterns.
Evaluating how families make decisions.
Identifying how power is exercised in a family, and helping family members learn the differences between fear and respect.
Encouraging and promoting love, understanding, empathy, and forgiveness, while helping family members to understand the role of guilt and blame in family dynamics.
Dissolving old wounds, and resentments that get in the way of developing healthy relational patterns.
Helping families to heal deep wounds due to “family secrets” that cover up shame, usually present in families with a history or incest, abuse, domestic violence, victims of crime, and addiction.
Developing a “new narrative” that supports a family to open to new ways of relating and communicating.
Identifying how family members, consciously or unconsciously, tend to develop compensatory behaviors as a way to maintain the equilibrium of the family. Some examples include: one parent being too rigid, the other too permissive; one child being “totally responsible”, while the other is “totally irresponsible”; one family member being “too serious”, the other “not taking anything serious”; some member of the family yearning for contact and connection, while others withdraw avoiding any intimacy.
Dealing with external stressors and changes, such as losses, death, remarriage, divorce, life transitions, cultural pressure and expectations on the family.
Evaluating acculturation, immigration, multi-cultural, and diversity issues that might influence the ability of the family to function properly.
Helping step-families and blended families adapt and grow as a family unit.
Reorganizing a family as a cohesive unit that encourages individuals to be independent and interconnected at the same time.
Individual therapy helps with: Depression and anxiety, Powerful emotions that feel overwhelming, Building self-esteem, Trauma, Addictions, Parent-child conflict, Eating and body issues, Deepening spirituality
Couples therapy (do not have to be married to attend) can help with: Emotional enmeshment or estrangement, Not feeling like you are on the same page, Trouble with intimacy, Sexual concerns, Communication concerns, Fighting excessively, Impact of trauma, Overly critical or withholding what is important to you, Desire to strengthen your commitment to each other, Exploring ways to have increased satisfaction, Navigating recovery from sexual abuse, Recovery for one or both of the partners from an addiction, The presence of depression, anxiety, bipolar, or other mental illness in one or both partners, Parenting, Adoption, Parenting a special needs child, Longing to rekindle love, passion, and excitement