Alan Strachan, Ph. D. Santa Cruz Area Marriage and Family Therapist

Counseling of Santa Cruz

Alan Strachan, Ph.D. (831) 685-3100

Welcome to Counseling Santa Cruz! I have over 25 years experience as a licensed psychotherapist, specializing in:

Relationship Difficulties
Improving Self-esteem
Anxiety / Depression
Childhood Trauma
Coping With Illness
Sexuality / Sexual Addiction
Substance Abuse
Spiritual Concerns
Grief and loss
Stress
Career / Life Transitions

My approach to counseling:

My approach at Counseling Santa Cruz is personal and interactive, and my clients find me understanding, caring and easy to relate to. I create a safe and nurturing environment for you to explore the issues that are most important to you.

My approach to counseling is to recognize and support each person’s inner wisdom and innate capacity for self-transformation.

On a practical level, I help people make changes in areas such as relationships, addictions, career, self-esteem, life transitions and health.

At the same time, I recognize that such changes occur within a larger spiritual context. In addition to practical concerns, each of us has a need to understand the meaning of our lives and to know our deeper purpose. When we know ourselves on this level, then the daily choices we make will be in alignment with our vision, our values, and our life’s purpose.

Alan Strachan, Ph.D.
Counseling Santa Cruz
(831) 685-3100

Psychotherapy

The issues I work with include:

Relationships

Relationships can be very challenging. The relationships we have with family, friends and colleagues frequently trigger our deepest feelings and can make us feel out of control. It is no surprise, then, that relationships are the most common issue people wish to explore in counseling. Working on our relationships – and the personal feelings they evoke in us – can be very rewarding, allowing us to mature and discover a deeper sense of peace and happiness. I can guide you through relationship challenges by:

helping you to become more direct and authentic in your communication
developing more empathy for yourself and your partner, and
improving your ability to resolve conflict

Emotional Challenges

I will help you to recognize, become more comfortable with, and appropriately express a wider range of feelings, such as anger, grief, depression, anxiety, fear, and despair. I have also worked with many adult clients who were abused as children.

Spiritual Concerns

Many of my clients wish to gain a deeper understanding of the role spirituality plays in their lives and to more fully integrate their spirituality into their daily life. Addressing spiritual issues is a deeply personal and richly rewarding process. If it important to you to develop your spirituality, we can address many issues, including but not limited to:

• identifying your life purpose
• aligning your behavior with your spiritual values
• developing spiritual practices, such as meditation / contemplation
• deepening your recovery from substance abuse or other addictions
• addressing deep, sustained hopelessness and despair, sometimes referred to as the “Dark Night of the Soul”
• learning to distinguish between your personality issues and an essential knowing of the Self
• healing wounds you may have sustained from harmful exposure to a dysfunctional spiritual teacher or community
• navigating a profound transformational crisis -- sometimes referred to as a spiritual emergence -- which can include experiences such as extreme altered states of consciousness and symptoms of kundalini awakening, and which may result in a greater freedom of personal choice, and a deeper connection with people, nature and the universe.

Gender Healing

The gender conditioning we receive frequently creates a great deal of pain and misunderstanding. Such conditioning can affect our self-esteem as well as our relationships. I support clients who wish to move from limiting roles to an authentic expression of self; who have experienced a loss of self-control through sexual obsession and acting out; and who are confronting issues of betrayal and abandonment.

Health and Wellness

Emotional, physical and spiritual well-being are all intimately connected. It is very common for psychological issues to appear as physical symptoms, and equally common for physical illness to create emotional distress. I can help you with health-related issues such as substance abuse, coping with chronic illness and stress management.

Alan Strachan, Ph.D.
Counseling Santa Cruz
(831) 685-3100

My Background

I have been in private practice for over 25 years. In addition, for 9 years I was the staff psychotherapist for SRI International (formerly the Stanford Research Institute).

Specialized Training

I trained for 8 years in Process Work with Arnold Mindell. My doctoral dissertation was based on this training: it was a study of the relationship between childhood dreams and chronic body symptoms that developed in adulthood. I also received specialized training and certification in gender issues from the Satyana Institute.

Spiritual Focus

I have been exploring the interface between psychology and spirituality for over 35 years, both personally and professionally, and I have maintained a meditation practice for nearly 30 years. I am co-founder (along with my wife, Janet Coster) of the Temenos Fellowship of AIWP, a non-profit organization that offers individual and couple's counseling for people on the spiritual path.

Appointments

For a free phone consultation or to make an appointment, please call me at Counseling Santa Cruz: (831) 685-3100.

For Counseling in Santa Cruz, call
Alan Strachan, Ph.D.
(831) 685-3100

Whatever you can dream, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it. ~ Goethe

Home | My Philosophy | Psychotherapy | My Background | Gender Healing