Brainspotting Therapists in Novato, CA

Wednesday afternoon appointments still available!- Welcome! My name is Dr. Annie Buxbaum. I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and have a Doctorate in Human and Organizational Psych. I work with couples struggling with communication, intimacy, and overall wanting a change in their relationship. My passion also includes supporting clients who are pregnant, postpartum, or struggling with miscarriages and infertility. I am skilled with Brainspotting to support clients wanting to work on Trauma.

The heart and emphasis of my work is to help you know and trust your deepest feelings and to live an emotionally authentic life. When you become more intimate and present with yourself you become more intimate and authentic with others. As you know yourself better, you'll discover how certain emotions, behaviors and beliefs have shaped your life and relationships and you'll become empowered to make many important changes. For over 20 years, I've helped couples and individuals develop increased self-trust and self-awareness, greater life purpose and more conscious, loving and intimate relationships.

As an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist as well as a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist- Supervisor, I am dedicated to helping you identify and overcome any intimacy challenges within the sex therapy realm, including sex/love addiction. This encompasses behaviors such as desire discrepency, successive unfulfilling relationships, affairs, excessive internet porn usage and intimacy anorexia. I also am a Certified Partner of Sex Addicts Specialist, and through a trauma based model, am able to help the Partner work through their own painful experience of loving and being involved with someone with out of control sexual compulsivity.

Opening up around the vulnerable and intimate details of our lives can be very uncomfortable. There is so much pressure to be “happy”, “better”, or “perfect”, while receiving messaging that being anything else is unacceptable. We are very adaptive yet often struggle to effectively get our needs met, so may engage in avoidance behaviors and withhold or internalize our feelings to try to prevent things from getting worse. You want to feel more like your true self and get more satisfaction out of your relationships. You need an unconditionally supportive, non-judgmental, creative, and humorous therapist who accepts you however you are.

I offer a relational, insightful, effective approach to therapy. I often work with people who are anxious, sensitive, deep-feelers who can be overcritical of themselves. I have a good capacity for attuning to my clients, and to be present with their depth and grief as we work through important places. When working through traumatic experiences I offer tools such as Brainspotting and the Safe and Sound Protocol to help calm and regulate the body and brain, and allow new perspectives and patterns to emerge. In our work I hope to foster acceptance of your whole self, allowing more connection to community, and to the cosmos.

As a psychotherapist, I work collaboratively to support and empower individuals in the process of self-discovery, growth, and healing. My treatment approach is integrative/holistic, informed by training, continuing education, and clinical experience. The modalities/frameworks I provide are derived from but not limited to: Mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Hypnotherapy, Brainspotting, Integral Somatic Psychology, Gestalt, Depth Psychology, Brief Psychodynamic Therapy, Humanistic-Existential Psychology, and Transpersonal Psychology.

My primary focus is rooted in the belief that identifying strengths and resiliencies are key components to working effectively in the therapeutic format. We will stay focused on using these abilities to inform decision making while also exploring the impact of personal challenges. I like to use curiosity, intuition and empathic insight to continually deepen our therapeutic connection, and to offer homework to keep the work alive during the week. Working in this dynamic style ideally creates an increased sense of Self, motivation for change, and a reduction of current problematic symptoms.

Whether it's families, couples or individuals, I bring my enthusiasm and warmth to each person I work with. In therapy with me you won't be bombarded by psycho-babble or heady interpretations. What you will get is my full attention, real talk and an emphasis on being in the moment. Together we will slow down, get grounded and deeply consider what you want for yourself and look at what is getting in the way. I am passionate about helping you see your strengths and fortifying areas that need reinforcement. I also offer support to parents struggling with family life.

Specializing in trauma and addiction. I believe that addiction, alcoholism, depression, the things that push against your joy, calm, serenity, and sense of security, are powerful and baffling. Still, something unique inside of you is ready to push back against it all. The fear, anxiety, depression, and trauma that press against your head and chest are real, but they should not define you. I feel my role is to help you find the resources within to overcome the challenges and suffering that life may bring.

My goal as a therapist is to help my clients learn how to effectively manage anxiety and stress, decrease depression, support positive life transitions, improve social connections, and build effective parenting skills. I use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, combined with Mindfulness, Psychodynamic, and Client-Centered therapy techniques to help clients navigate the challenges they face. This allows my clients to learn from their life experiences, understand the impacts of their current patterns and decision making, and explore and develop new ways of thinking and acting.