Dr. Colleen Hamilton enjoys premarital therapy, and for married couples an early intervention, “preventive medicine” approach when experiencing difficulties. She encourages couples to come in early in their relationship to help develop excellent couple’s communication and interaction skills. This also helps couples identify possible topics that may become problematic, and allows these concerns to be addressed sooner rather than later. When problems do occur, she encourages couples to come in as soon as they realize the problem is not alleviating quickly; research has shown that people who get help for problems early on are more successful and therapy takes less time. If individual issues such as depression, stress/anxiety, anger management, high emotionality, or trauma are impacting the relationship, Dr. Hamilton can take a combined individual and couple’s sessions approach to address these concerns. As a child psychologist as well, if child/teen issues are impacting the couple’s relationship, she can help guide and coach the parents to effectively address the child-related issues and alleviate the stress on the couple.

Dr. Hamilton was trained in an integrative therapy model to include psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and client centered theories and techniques, all of which she uses in providing therapeutic services for a wide variety of life challenges, to address the unique needs of each person and couple. Each client brings a very personal and individual set of needs and desires to their relationships and to the experience of therapy. Dr. Hamilton is sensitive to these personal factors while helping her clients identify and focus on the specific problems that are affecting them in their relationship and daily lives.