Roya Sakhai, Ph.D., MFT
My hope is to help you realize all your dreams.
Stay focus on your present and future and not your past.
Not blame your past to stop you from any achievement in your life.
Find ways to accept yourself and find love and empathy for yourself and people around you!
Find your patterns, change the ones that were negative, and keep your positive patterns.
In summary, find the best life you and only you can live.
My techniques are a combination of:
Attachment theory, which believes that earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life and make a child have a sense of life with secure attachments that can help her/him explore life and go through life feeling safe and secure. Or insecure attachment which make a child’s life a place where no one can be trusted or attached to and thus a life full of insecurity.
Object relations theory, which believes that humans have an innate drive to form and maintain relationships. In childhood, we form relationships with others. It is through our relationships with the significant people around us that we take in parts of them and slowly build a sense of ourselves.
Ego psychology, which uses mechanisms of defense, transference, reality-testing, to attain ego ideal.
Cross-cultural psychology. Use of both the etic approach, which emphasizes on similarities of cultures, and the emic approach, which emphasis differences between cultures.
Treatment for PTSD and depression
For treating PTSD and depression I encourage my clients to focus on reachable goals in their present life.
By focusing on what clients have now instead of what they lost due to depression or trauma in the past, they will find positive ways to change their life.
Group Therapy for Clients who suffer from PTSD
With many years of experience working with Afghan clients who suffered from war and torture , I learned that extreme trauma can-not be forgotten but can only be accepted. The treatment for PTSD is not to forget the past but to accept the past and move on to the present knowing that you will never forget the pain but will accept it and will learn to live with it in your best ability.
” I remember one of my clients suddenly remembered death of his sister, he started sobbing, I asked him how did she die, he said it was war, we were under bombings, she was at the other side of the room, the bomb burned that side of our home and I saw her in flames, I wish I was dead and not her I cannot forget this. I asked him when that happened, he said 25 years ago but it is as if it was yesterday. I told him our goal is not help you forget because one does not forget such a deep pain but our goal is to help you accept it and live with the good memories of your sister and not stay in those flames with her.
In our PTSD group therapy for our Afghan clients at Multi-Lingual Counseling we help our clients learn to accept their past, concentrate on the present and set goals for present and future.
Our goal is to help our clients to be proud of who they are now and not to mourn the person they were in the past.
At Multi-Lingual Counseling we use this model to help our clients start living their life in the present and restore their self esteem and pride.