Margaret Barry
Hello, I am a licensed Clinical Social Worker and have been practicing therapy for 25 plus years. I enjoy working with clients with a wide variety of issues including anxiety, OCD, couples work and those with histories of trauma.
I enjoy working with clients with a wide variety of issues including anxiety, OCD, couples work and those with histories of trauma.
I am warm and compassionate, interactive and enjoy seeing my clients grow in understanding of themselves and how to heal what is hurting them.
First session
In our first session, I will be looking to understand what brought you into therapy, gather information about your history and begin to develop together reasonable goals for our work together.
Strengths
I love being a therapist and a social worker. I truly enjoy getting to know my clients and together discovering how they can attain their therapeutic goals. I believe I am insightful, able to create a safe, accepting space for them to share their fears, regrets, feelings of shame and guilt. I spend time preparing for my sessions and check in regularly to make sure my clients feel understood by me and that we are working on what is important to them. I have been attending trainings my entire career and have supervised interns throughout. This has kept my knowledge base fresh and inspired me to stay up with new techniques and modalities.
Ideal clients
I truly enjoy working with a wide variety of clients and have my entire career. Now that I have retired from my fulltime social work/therapy career in Contra Costa County, after 32 years, I have more time to immerse myself in developing and honing my skills in a variety of areas.
Treatment methods
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
I use some form of CBT in most sessions. Understanding how one's thoughts effect one’s feelings and then behaviors is key to making both emotional behavioral changes.
Compassion-Focused
I use Compassion focused therapy to help clients develop habits that reduce self-criticism and shame to enable a kinder view of themselves and help them offer forgiveness to themselves more easily.
EMDR
I use this evidenced based form of trauma therapy to help clients reprocess traumatic memories and allow their brain to resume a natural healing process.
Exposure Response Prevention (ERP)
I use ERP to help clients with OCD to learn to sit with the uncertainty that drives them to ritualize and keeps them stuck in the vicious cycle of OCD
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS enables us to to get to know and heal the burdened parts inside us and to trust the self to lead. I use this method to enable clients to go inward and get to know the parts of them that no longer serve their best interests and to trust that they are safe to lead with their compassionate, whole self.
Location
Virtual sessions
In-person sessions1621 North Broadway, Walnut Creek, CA 94596