Psychotherapy

Estelle FrankelEstelle Frankel has been a licensed marriage, family and child therapist in private practice in Albany, Ca. since 1986 specializing in individual and couple therapy. (MFT #22195) She has extensive training in contemporary psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy and incorporates Jungian, transpersonal, somatic, relational, and mindfulness-based approaches into her work. She is also a long-time student of Martin Seligman’s Positive Psychology, an approach that emphasizes the emotional and psychological benefits of character development—how we develop greater resilience and wholeness by mastering core virtues and character strengths such as gratitude, compassion (for self and others), humility, audacity, generosity, forgiveness, patience and persistence.

Estelle brings wisdom, compassion, humor, poetry and a spiritual perspective to her work with people suffering from depression, anxiety, loss, acute and chronic illness and major life transitions. She affirms every person’s capacity to grow and change and does not define people by their problems and deficiencies. Rather, she helps her clients develop greater self-acceptance and experience their essential wholeness, resilience and capacity to heal. Estelle sees the relational matrix–the bond between client and therapist–as a vehicle for transformation. Within the context of this intimate and trusting relationship, people develop new capacities and learn to take risks so that change becomes possible.

Estelle has participated in numerous psychoanalytic study and consultation groups and spent a year training with the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP). She also completed a year of training in couple therapy at the PACT Institute with Dr. Stan Tatkin. As a certified Level I PACT therapist Estelle integrates a neurobiological understanding of love with insights from attachment theory. She also brings extensive training in Marshall Rosenberg’s NVC (nonviolent communication) approach into her work with couples.

Estelle combines an engaging interpersonal style with a deep sense of compassion and empathy for her clients. She knows how to help people relax and feel safe in treatment so that they can take emotional and behavioral risks to realize their innermost potential. Estelle makes use of an array of creative modalities in treatment, including: dreamwork, poetry, sand tray, storytelling and therapeutic ritual. For those interested in meditation and spirituality, she brings a lifetime of experience in contemplative practice and world wisdom traditions.

(Estelle’s office is wheelchair accessible.)

Schedule a session: estelle.a.frankel@gmail.com.

Ancient stone gate

 …when we go beyond our personal predicaments and locate ourselves within the larger story, we come to experience our lives as resonant with a much greater matrix of meaning, in which any transition we undergo, whether it be a death, divorce, illness, or disability, may initiate us into the larger mysteries of life. And by locating ourselves within the crucible of the great myth, we are guided on our journey of transformation by the archetypal forces embedded within the myth. – Sacred Therapy

Copyright © Estelle Frankel 2022