FROG POINT THERAPY
Offerings
COUPLE’S THERAPY
EMDR
FAMILY THERAPY
INDIVIDUAL THERAPY
THERAPY FOR THERAPISTS
FROG POINT THERAPY
COUPLE’S THERAPY
Cultivating Healthy Intimacy
As a recognition of differing epistemologies is essential between counselor and client, it is even more important between intimate partners. One of the central causes of interpersonal conflict is when two people are “speaking different languages” but do not know it.
We tend to assume that others perceive and judge the world as we do and often run into problems when we assume that our reality is everyone’s reality. The majority of interpersonal work involves helping people recognize this, reshaping the mental landscape of relating, and reshaping communication.
It is a process crucial to healthy relationships at every level—intimate, familial, societal, and political.
Our choice of partner is often not a coincidence. Their unique array of a partner’s traits often fit like a puzzle piece with our own characteristics– sometimes in good ways and sometimes in volatile ways.
“When a dyad is healthy, these differences are complementary and create a unifying tension that cultivates intimacy.”
When there is unresolved anger and resentment, these differences continually polarize. Because our partners tend to activate our core ways of relating to close others, we tend to project our trauma, unresolved wounds, and fears onto them which corrupts intimacy in a partnership. Much of the work that happens in couple’s therapy involves re-owning these projections and clearing space to perceive our partner without the haze of illusion that projections create. In this way, real intimacy can grow. Read about getting started.
FROG POINT THERAPY
EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is one of the industry’s leading treatment for trauma of any severity. Whether a client needs to heal from an acute traumatic event such as a car accident or natural disaster, or trying to work through painful childhood experiences that lead to debilitating negative self-beliefs (“I’m a failure” or “I’m not enough”), EMDR is one of the most effective approaches for accessing and rewiring parts of the brain that talk therapy cannot reach. EMDR involves the use of bilateral stimulation via visual or auditory stimulation in order to reprocess traumatic experiences and reintegrate healthier beliefs about self, others, and the world. Frog Point Therapists are trained in a variety of trauma treatmenta including EMDR and have had the privilege of successfully treating many clients who sought to make sense of adverse life experiences.
FROG POINT THERAPY
FAMILY THERAPY
We all know from first-hand experience that well into adulthood, family dynamics can be complex and difficult to manage. As people get older, patterns become more crystallized and the ways we interact are more habituated. Families have adaptive and maladaptive ways of relating to one another, and the maladaptive patterns often come to a head during times of elevated stress or change. Whether your family is dealing with the loss of an older parent, in a period of transition, or in the process of accommodating new members as the system grows and blends with other families, a family therapist can act as an expert mediator and create opportunities for family members to discover, untangle, and change old patterns. Despite itself, a family, like any other organism, must also evolve in its own unique way and therapy often facilitates what can sometimes become a painful process.
FROG POINT THERAPY
INDIVIDUAL THERAPY
Healthy Adult Development
Our client is someone who is ready to “roll their sleeves up and get to work.” While therapy does not need to be more painful than necessary, much of the work we do entails stewarding people into spaces of their mind they have never been, are too afraid to venture into, or consciously and unconsciously avoid entering—often an uncomfortable experience.
Growing your mind up is hard. Change is hard. It is that first jump off the high dive that often feels the most terrifying. We specialize in coaching our clients through their next major upshift in development.
If you feel stuck like you know things are not working and do not know why, or you know what’s happening but do not know what to do differently, or you feel lost and want to see things clearly, you are our ideal client. Read about getting started.
Millennials and Generation Z
Never before seen levels of anxiety and depression are one hallmark of a generation that has had to adapt to rapid changes while the traditional structures that undergird normal life fall apart. An overabundance of choice; the pressure to “find your calling” and “change the world”; fear of missing out, crippling self-doubt, impossible portrayals of what life “should” look like in media, attitudes of disposable everything and transactional relationships have resulted in a perpetual state of paralysis and meandering through life that leaves so many chronically unhappy and lost. Attitudes that worked in older generations do not fit with the rapidly changing landscape of the global and national psyche. These are unprecedented times that call for specialized support.
Millennials and Generation Z have the difficult task of growing out of old ways of being that have been inherited from previous generations. As they begin to open their eyes, they choose not to participate in those antiquated institutions and feel a sense of disorientation as almost all the categories from which people have historically derived a sense of identity quickly evaporate.
Emerging adults are searching for answers to new questions in old spaces and coming up short. Technology and social media have resulted in the atrophy of people’s ability to be present, to connect, and to establish meaningful relationships. Emerging adults are surrounded by people but feel lonelier than any ever, causing unprecedented levels of generation-wide mental health disorder. As the bones of life as we know it continue to be rattled, we need wise voices to coach us through this period of upheaval and help us transform—not obliterate—the cultural, social, and intrapsychic infrastructure we have.
FROG POINT THERAPY
THERAPY FOR THERAPISTS
There are so many reasons to be in your own treatment as a mental health professional.
However, treating a mental health professional in their own therapy requires a specialized skill set. As therapists, our professional work is closely woven into the fabric of our being. We are not blank slates. In the most basic sense, we are in a relationship with each of our clients and those relationships move and shape us as they do our clients. Each experience illuminates different facets of our personhood and so we necessarily have to attend to our own being to do our work well. It takes a therapist who can expertly manage the boundaries between counselor, mentor, supervisor, and peer to curate a growth experience for a mental health professional in individual therapy.
Having spent equal amounts of time as a practitioner, professor, and clinical supervisor, Dr. Barimany offers this service to mental health workers who seek their own care and growth.
See our client testimonials to hear from mental health therapists who have worked with Dr. Barimany. Read about getting started.
HOW DO I GET STARTED?
- Pick a therapist whose skills and areas of expertise align with your therapy goals.
- Schedule a consultation. Read more here about what to expect in a consultation call.
- If it seems like a good fit, schedule your first session. Click to email us at info@frogpointtherapy.com.
- Assess how you feel about the fit and either decide to move forward with a standing appointment or interview another therapist. Don’t feel
obligated to keep meeting with someone that doesn’t seem like the right match for you—if it doesn’t feel like a good fit, you’re missing a crucial component for success in therapy.
WHAT DOES "FROG POINT" MEAN?
In railroad engineering, a frog rail is a v-shaped mechanical installation enabling railway trains to be guided from one track to another at a railway junction. The pair of v-shaped rails are called “frog points.” These points can be moved to direct an oncoming train toward a diverging path. Watch a video of how a frog point works here.
The frog point is an analogy for how we at Frog Point Therapy think about our role in the change process: as facilitators and conduits of transformation. We can’t do the work for you, but we do get involved in co-creating a structure within which your growth–in whatever form it takes–is scaffolded and catalyzed by the most modern and integrated knowledge in adult development. Like the frog point facilitates a track change for an oncoming train, we support our client’s forward progress into a new stage of development toward a fuller life.
WHAT IF MY NEW THERAPIST JUST DOESN’T FEEL LIKE THE RIGHT FIT?
Sometimes, things just don’t gel. If you feel like your therapist and you just aren’t ‘vibe-ing,’ it is best to bring this up for discussion with him or her. The reason for this is not so you can work out your differences and keep going (although that can be important and transformative in and of itself), but to perhaps illuminate something deeper that is being triggered in your relational dynamic that can lead to insight about your relational style.
If you decide it’s just not the right fit, you should let your therapist know as directly as possible. A good therapist will not be offended and instead will hold that truth with compassion, curiosity, and respect. If you decide it’s not for you, most therapists will offer a few hand-picked referrals for you. Your well-being is always the priority.
WHAT DOES FPT DO TO BE SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS?
Nearly everyone struggles with mental health difficulties at some point in life, but not everyone has the means to go to therapy and even fewer have the resources to seek private healthcare. As mental health professionals, we believe that no one person’s difficulties are less important than another’s and understand that our economic system stratifies what treatments are available to whom. To make our services more accessible to an inclusive socio-economic market, every Frog Point Therapist reserves seats on their caseload for clients who need the financial barrier to high-quality mental health treatment lowered. A few times every year, we conduct community outreach in the District of Columbia: we go into various communities around the district and perform mental health screenings, connect citizens to affordable mental health treatment in their neighborhoods, offer resources on basic coping skills and psychoeducation on wellness, and just spend time being in human presence with our community in all of its diverse beauty.
Sustainability throughout all of our ecosystems (intrapersonal, interpersonal, social, environmental) is the new gold standard and Frog Point seeks to be a leader in private healthcare in this sense as well in the more technical aspects of human development. Deeper integration of the self and deeper integration in community are the new frontier for wellness: healthy self, healthy society. Healthy society, healthy self.
CAN I MEET WITH MY FPT THERAPIST ONLINE?
Yes, anyone who is looking for online therapy can work with the therapists at Frog Point Therapy. We provide virtual therapy for those clients who either prefer to, or need to meet online.
WHAT SITUATIONS AND ISSUES ARE IDEAL FOR COUNSELING AT FROG POINT THERAPY?
For those looking to improve their overall quality of life, make the next big developmental shift in their life, take their career to the next level, cultivate a relationship with the self, find a deeper sense of presence in life and intimacy in relationships, Frog Point Therapy is the place for you. We currently do not have resources to treat serious mental illness or substance abuse but are happy to provide referrals to other treatment centers or providers in the community.
“I never thought laughing would come very easily again, let alone that it could be a regular part of therapy. I was barely surviving for so long and couldn’t even consider counseling; while talking about my grief is deeply, deeply painful, I’m starting to feel like there’s a way to carry it while I try to remember how to feel happy again. Sarah’s ability to hold space for all of it – the pain, the anger and the laughter – is such a gift to me.”