Therapy for Adults in Hermosa Beach, Including IFS

Is therapy right for you?

People come to therapy for many reasons, and you don’t need to be in crisis to start. Therapy with Dr. Maddison Paul may help if you’re dealing with:

• Anxiety or constant worry that's hard to switch off
• Low mood, or losing interest in things that used to matter
• Strong emotions that feel hard to manage, or that come on fast
• Strain in a relationship, or the same conflicts coming up again and again
• A life transition, such as a new job, a breakup, becoming a parent or a loss
• Feeling stuck, even when you know what you want to change

If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call 911, or call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), right away.

How Dr. Paul works

Dr. Paul is a licensed clinical psychologist who grew up in Redondo Beach. She integrates three approaches and adjusts the mix to you.

Internal Family Systems (IFS)

IFS was developed by Richard Schwartz, a family therapist. It starts from the idea that everyone has different “parts”: the part that worries, the part that pushes you to be perfect, the part that shuts down. Parts often try to protect you, even when their methods cause problems. IFS also describes a core “Self,” the calm, curious center that can listen to those parts. In sessions, you learn to get to know your parts instead of fighting them.

Many people find IFS a natural fit. To be straightforward about the evidence, its research base is smaller and newer than CBT’s. Early studies are promising, and more research is under way.

Attachment-based therapy

Our earliest relationships shape how we connect, trust and handle stress as adults. Attachment-based therapy looks at those patterns and how they show up in your relationships now. The relationship with your therapist is part of the work, too.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

CBT focuses on the links between thoughts, feelings and actions. You learn practical skills, such as spotting thinking traps, calming your body and facing avoided situations in small steps. CBT has strong research support for anxiety and depression.

How the approaches fit together

You don’t have to pick one. Say anxiety keeps you up at night. CBT can give you tools to calm your body and question the worst-case thoughts. IFS can help you get to know the anxious part and what it’s trying to protect you from. Attachment-based work can show how old relationship patterns feed the worry today. Dr. Paul will explain what she’s suggesting and why, and you can always ask for more of one approach or less of another.

What sessions are like

Sessions last 45 minutes. You decide together how often to meet, and that can change as things improve. Sessions take place in our Hermosa Beach office, an easy drive from Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Torrance and Palos Verdes, or by telehealth if you are in California at the time of the session. Therapy is available with Dr. Paul or with one of our psychological associates, who work under Dr. Paul’s supervision.

What you can expect

Therapy isn’t a quick fix, and we can’t promise a set result or timeline. Change often comes in small steps, and some weeks feel harder than others. What you can expect is a clinician who listens closely, explains her thinking in plain words and asks for your feedback. Between sessions, you may try a skill or notice a pattern, but there’s no homework you have to get right.

If you’re wondering whether attention problems are part of the picture, Dr. Paul also offers adult ADHD evaluations. If another type of care would suit you better, she’ll tell you.