services | David Lim Therapy & Supervision
Counseling, Coaching, Clinical Supervision, Therapy for Therapists
Individual & Couples Counseling, Coaching
Experience, Practice, Training | I’m a fidelity trained Internal Family Systems therapist (Level 1 training successfully completed through the IFS Institute). I am also Foundationally trained in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy by Behavioral Tech (Dr. Marsha Linehan’s teaching and technology company). I am also fidelity trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) by trainers with the EMDR International Association. I have extensive training in Motivational Interviewing as well as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and my practice is also informed by Psychodynamic principles, Acceptance Committment Therapy, as well as Neuro-linguistic Programming
Individual Psychotherapy | I help individuals who are challenged by, but not limited to:
Anxiety, Depression (MDD, Bipolar), Personality Disorders, Adjustment Disorder, PTSD, Trauma, Acute Stress, ADHD, Anxiety (GAD, OCD, Phobias, Hoarding behaviors); Compulsive & Impulsive behaviors, Interpersonal Distress, school and social problems, relationship and work problems, chronic suicidality, self-harm, severe emotional dysregulation. I am also beginning a new chapter in helping individuals with Chronic Pain. My work is inspired by Dr. Howard Schubiner, MD. and his cutting-edge approach to the “Mind Body Syndrome.”
Alignment Coaching | Coach and teach individuals to align wants & desires with emotion, thoughts, and behavior to capitalize on natural opportunities for success.
Success Metrics | As a former therapist at Kaiser Permamente, clients on my case load (260), reported a 71% reduction in symptoms. Higher functioning patients, who began treatment at normative or subclinical symptoms experienced a 30% reduction in symptoms. In total, 80 percent of all patients, treated reported a significant reduction in symptoms. | Contact David
Clinical Supervision
My Approach to Clinical Supervision | I have run marathons. I have also gone through licensure hours. They are both remarkably similar. First, there is form and running style and strategy. What style fits your physical characteristics? Are you a heal-toe runner? Does your natural foot strike occur in the middle of the foot? In licensure – are you a CBT person or more of an Existentialist? Do you like interacting with people, does it give you energy? Or are you more introverted? Then there is simply practicing how to run. Observing how you run or having a coach observe how you run. And you pick up distance along the way. In licensure, it is often observing what happens to you in session, video or zoom recorded sessions. If that is not available, then role play is the next best thing.
Pacing | When to increase or decrease your stride — when to pick up more client hours and when to slow your client hours down. Do you know your clients? Are you practicing in Community Mental Health? A group practice? Outpatient? Can your clients relate to the intervention? I look at supervision from a standpoint of time, strategy, and direct skill teaching. Supervision is centered around helping the supervisee develop a clinical practice consistent with the experience of their own authenticity, regardless of psychological orientation.
Intuition in your practice | How to keep your client’s motivation, focus, attention, interest, by using intermittent reinforcement, pacing, pausing, mirroring, non-verbal expressions, voice inflections, and recognizing the session’s own denouement. Understanding the beginning, the middle, and the end of treatment and the stages of change. | Contact David
Clinical fundamentals | Therapy, Case Management & Advocacy with David Lim, LiCSW, MSW, MBA:
— goal setting, treatment planning, & progress reporting
— confidentiality vs duty to warn; privacy
— setting boundaries
— how to give homework
— manage your practice
— minimize liability
— breaking the righting reflex
— overcoming your own discomfort when addressing the elephant in the room and what skills and techniques to use
— Using different levels of validation and active listening
— When to ask questions
— When to present a question as an open-ended statement
— Knowing when your countertransference is acting up & how to use that to your advantage
— Effective case consultation, keeping grounded with a client who has complex & numerous problems
— Breaking clients from the trance of repeating patterns & keeping things on track even if your client wants to go off track
— How your own tendencies towards narrative, avoidance, rumination, distorted thinking interferes with your work
Family Therapy & Parent Coaching
Youth & Parents | I work with families using an evidence-based, behaviorally specific approach. I was trained by the oldest and best-documented Intensive Family Preservation Services program in the United States.
I offer Services in…
— Therapy & Counseling
— Family crisis intervention
— Providing life-skills education
— Parent coaching & therapy for parents and caregivers to enhance parenting skills and address complex parenting barriers
Success Metrics | In four-plus years as a therapist with the Institutes for Family Development, 100% of families reported “very satisfied” or “satisfied” by the intervention; 97% reported that their situations have changed for the “better” or “a lot better;” 95% reported using new coping and behavioral skills learned during intervention; 86% reported progress made on goals established at onset of interview. | Contact David
Therapy for Therapists
“You are not your job” | Several years ago, after a fitness class, a discussion on politics came about. I was asked for my opinion. I answered honestly, and it was not the response the group thought they would hear. The debate continued, then I heard the following: “I don’t get your answer, aren’t you supposed to be a therapist?” To which I replied, “that’s my job, it’s not who I am.”
Today, there is an assumption made — the therapist and the profession are one in the same. The doctor and the profession are one in the same. The advocate and the profession are one in the same. The case manager and the profession are one in the same. Sometimes providers mistake their own emotional, psychological knowledge, clinical expertise and understanding for self-awareness, insight, well-being, and vulnerability.
Carl Jung spoke of the “wounded therapist ” phenomena. In a 2017 study conducted by M.E. Cyetovac and A.L. Adame, “the wounded therapist: Understanding the relationship between personal suffering and clinical practice (published in the Humanistic Psychologist, 45 (4), 348-366),” the authors state the following:
“… Although past research has described the wounded healer in conjunction with issues such as countertransference, self-disclosure, and supervision, it has not substantially addressed the relationship between the therapist’s psychological wounds and his or her identity as a clinician …”
Personal Experience | Years of struggle with Attention Deficit Disorder, Anxiety, Depression, addiction, and hypomanic occurrences. Being a member of a culture that continues to significantly stigmatize mental health. Years of therapy, including therapy as a therapist client. And my own initial shame that delayed my entry in this field for many years. It went something like this: How on earth can I help people, when I don’t even have my own act together? How can I help people with their relationship problems if I also have relationship problems?
And what makes it a challenge for a therapist to find his/her/their own therapist? The same set of variables that makes it difficult for a therapist to continue to work on their own issues — their own emotional and psychological knowledge, their own clinical expertise. I have been working with therapists since 2016 — to help them as professionals and to help them with personal issues. Therapists can be the most amazing clients and the most challenging. And some are both.
Working with therapists as clients takes a different skill set — much of it out-of-the-box; a sophistication of pacing, empathy, validation, and problem solving. It requires a different kind of space created. And an understanding that when a therapist works with a therapist client — transference and countertransference awareness becomes even more important. | Contact David
Groups & Classes
Due to COVID precautions, in-person classes/groups are paused. Telehealth classes in Emotional Resiliency, Interpersonal Skills and Procrastination are being developed, coming soon.
Passion and Emotional Resiliency Skills Class © 2016 David J. Lim | This class teaches individuals how to use specific, evidence-based skills to help them live a more resilient, authentic, and passionate life. Specifically, these skills and concepts help people become more adaptive and resilient to challenges by using emotions effectively. In addition, this class also teaches skills necessary to improve one’s Emotional Intelligence — Self-awareness, Emotional Management, Self-motivation, and Empathy. These factors help people improve the ability to identify, experience, tolerate, accept, connect to, and effectively use emotions. These skills are critical drivers of creativity, innovation, resourcefulness, motivation, determination, open heartedness, connection, and intimacy. These qualities help people meet their needs, wants, desires, in a strategic and resilient manner.
The 6 to 12 week course is based on evidence-based, Western psychological and educational orientations: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Relational Framework Theory and Acceptance Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Behavior Reinforcement, bio-social and neurochemical findings, vulnerability and shame research, as well as orientations found in Eastern Spiritual and Buddhist disciplines: the application of mindfulness, radical acceptance, the dialectical dilemma of acceptance and change, and the paradoxical principal of give and take. | Contact David
The class is for people who:
— Have a very difficult time maintaining close or intimate relationships and/or professional relationships.
— Quickly and often experience, shame, embarrassment, guilt or self-loathing.
— Experience a high degree of emotional sensitivity, reactivity — that is out of proportion with the upsetting event.
— Find that reaching goals or finishing goals are highly dependent upon mood.
— Tend to put a significant amount of energy in helping others, pleasing others, getting involved in the problems of others … in order to feel better or avoid problems and emotions.
— Have been medication compliant and/or compliant with therapy for an extended period of time and without seeing results.
— Experience intense bursts of anger or rage and can’t keep it in.
— Have a difficult time identifying what specific emotions are being felt.
— Have a difficult time determining whether they are feeling their own emotions or someone else’s.
— Have a difficult time soothing yourself or calming yourself down when you experience difficult emotions and/or are really good at pretending you are not experiencing or feeling a particular emotion.
— Experiencing extreme anxiety and/or avoidance of conversations or situations that may lead to discomfort, conflict, sadness, disappointment, confusion, anger and the converse, seeking conversations or situations that lead to discomfort, conflict, sadness, disappointment, confusion, anger.
— Find it very difficult to articulate what is wanted or have difficulty directly asking for it.
— Initiate situations or conversations in order to make others feel guilty, angry, agitated, embarrassed, ashamed or confused.
Success Metrics | Attendees who attend at least 10 weeks of classes saw 30% emotion regulation improvement (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation scale); 80% agree or strongly agree their mental health coping skills improved; 80% report regular use of the skills learned in everyday life; Individuals decreased their need to go to individual therapy by nearly 50% | Contact David
Connect with David
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Connect with David for Services in: Individual & Couples Counseling, Coaching, Clinical Supervision, Family Therapy & Parent Coaching, Therapy for Therapists, Groups & Classes and more.