For over 30 years, I have brought expertise, creativity, enthusiasm, and positive change to individuals and couples I have worked with. To achieve personal goals, effective therapy must bring integration of the physiological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of our functioning.
Client Focus
Session Format: Couple, Individual sessions.
Age Specialty: Adult, Senior
Languages: English
Treatment Approach
- Gestalt Therapy Encourages awareness of thoughts, feelings, and actions in the present moment. It helps people integrate different parts of themselves for wholeness.
- Intersubjective Therapy Explores the shared emotional experience between therapist and client. It emphasizes connection and mutual understanding.
- Object Relations Therapy Focuses on how early caregiver relationships shape current relationships. It aims to improve patterns of attachment and trust.
- Psychoanalytic Therapy Based on Freud’s theories, it explores unconscious conflicts and past experiences. It seeks to bring hidden issues into awareness.
- Psychodynamic Therapy Explores unconscious thoughts and patterns that influence current behavior. It builds insight into how the past impacts the present.
- Self Psychology Explores the development of self-esteem and identity. It emphasizes the importance of empathy in healing.
Education & Credentials
Bruce Howard PhD
- Male
- License # PSY 8275
- Licensed in California
- Practicing Since 1983
Education: 1981 PhD Clinical Psychology, California School of Professional Psychology - San Diego; 1979 MA Clinical Psychology, California School of Professional Psychology - San Diego;
1976 BA Psychology, University of California - Santa Cruz
Finances
Insurance
- Out of Network
Bruce Howard Practice Details
Therapy Sessions
- Available In-Person in Santa Barbara, CA 93101 and Santa Monica, CA
- Available Online for residents of California
Every person entering therapy has their unique history and story and the course of therapy is tailored for each person. In my clinical experience, however, the principles of healthy and effective functioning are universal and require a therapy that helps us to integrate the physiological, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dimension of our functioning.
As example, with anxiety there is an absence of healthy breathing (physiological) that maintains a chronic sense of danger. A lack of healthy breathing also dislocates us from our feelings and the vital internal support they provide. Additionally, when we do not have an emotionally attuned parent or caregiver during our development, painful feelings must be suppressed or repressed and this also results in an internal sense of danger or anxiety as we have not learned how to identify, express, regulate, and cope with these feelings.
In the course of our development and early relationships, we can form unhealthy belief systems about ourselves, how others see us, and the world; " I am not competent," " I am not lovable," "I am not worthy of getting my needs met," "People will wind up hurting me," "I will always get the short end of the stick in life." In looking at our history and the source of these beliefs their credibility is called forth to be challenged, modified , and replaced with new and healthy beliefs.
Finally, as painful feelings are integrated, and unhealthy belief systems are challenged and replaced, we need to experiment with new behaviors in the world and with others. In so doing, the positive response we receive will confirm for us that change is not only possible but real.