Areas of Expertise: PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Psychosomatic Disorders, Addiction, Relational Issues, Stress Management, Family Issues, Couple's Issues, Personal Growth, East/West Psychotherapy, Eating Disorders, Bipolar Disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorders. 7 years ago I created Psychosomatic Psychotherapy, a novel and highly effective treatment that integrates mind, body and emotion. This method targets blocked emotion and inflammation. Most Western therapies are essentially mind-oriented, but we are so much more than our thoughts. My approach includes elements of Emotion Focused Therapy, Short Term Psychodynamic Therapy, Somatic Therapy and Zen Buddhism. Psychosomatic Psychotherapy treats all mental health conditions, many chronic medical conditions and is quickly effective at helping people and their problems. We begin by telling our story. We go at a slower pace than usual and we pay special attention to the emotionally important parts of the story, e.g., talking to our mother, worrying about work, conflict in a relationship, etc. Here we pause and direct our attention to our abdomen and ask, “How do/did I feel about this or that or him or her?” Then we wait. We don’t rush to answer the question with our heads, we wait for an answer to slowly arise from our bodies. We are bypassing our intellectual defenses and asking our bodies what’s really going on. When discover our feelings we express them in a full-throated and wholehearted way! Then we just feel (not analyze!) that feeling in our bodies until the feeling dissolves or almost completely dissolves, usually within a few minutes. Last, we scan our bodies for any lingering areas of tightness or tension in places like the stomach, chest, throat, head, jaw, neck, or face. When we discover where we’re holding stress and somaticized emotions, we feel these areas until the tension/tightness/emotion dissolves, usually within a few minutes. Developing a greater capacity to feel also provides critical and deeper insight into our issues. The overall goal is to unblock emotions and reduce dangerous inflammation by metabolizing and processing emotions and somatic constrictions in the body. Along the way, we are also challenging old, disempowering stories and replacing them with more accurate, empowering narratives. When treatment integrates the cognitive, emotional, and somatic dimensions of our conditions, mental and physical symptoms are significantly reduced.
What can clients expect to take away from sessions with you?
Understanding, compassion, problem solving, insight, emotion management skills, warmth, stress management skills, and assignment of exercises for study and practice between sessions.
Explain to clients what areas you feel are your biggest strengths.
Studies have been conducted to examine which elements of therapy are the most important. The clear answer is the therapist-client relationship. Creating a connection with the client, developing an accepting, non-judgmental space and creating a deeply compassionate atmosphere are some of Dr. Takakjian's strongest skills. Phil is very active in therapy but he's also effective at creating a safe space in which client's can discover their own truths. Dr. Takakjian trained at UC Berkeley and Stanford where he was an Intern and then a Post-Doc Fellow at the Palo Alto/Menlo Park, Stanford, VA.