Peace of Mind is Already Within You.
Two Practice Locations:
110 Sutter Street
Suite 508,
San Francisco, CA
(Financial District)
415 Cambridge Avenue ,
Suite 23,
Palo Alto, CA
(Silicon Valley)
Office voice mail: 415-387-5330
Emergencies only” 415-310-1985
Email: rfosterphd@comcast.net
By understanding how our beliefs create our emotions and behavior and using the transformative power of intention and awareness, therapy will help you stop the causes of suffering and discover true peace, clarity and wisdom.
Welcome to my web site. I hope you find the information here helpful and gain an understanding of my practice and the work that I do and love. You are welcome to contact me if you have questions or comments. Thank you!
Psychotherapy is about understanding more thoroughly how our thoughts and beliefs effect our feelings and emotional states and thus create our behaviors. It is very important to separate expectable upset over life’s many built-in challenges such as loss of a loved one, a job loss, or sickness, from our own self induced suffering caused by how we are thinking and perceiving the outside situation. Once we begin to use our natural gift of non-judgmental conscious awareness, we can watch self-defeating thoughts and beliefs without building a bigger negative story around them. Psychotherapy builds awareness of your experience in the present moment in a way that causes anxious and depressing thoughts to be much less powerful and controlling.
I will help you identify the sources and causes of your mental and emotional distress. We will discover not only how to loosen up and diminish the power of those causes, but how to find the peace of mind that is already within you yet covered up by your emotional pain.
I have been practicing as a licensed Clinical Psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area for 23 years. My practice has included work in a variety of mental health agencies and organizations as well as a private practice. I am currently practicing full time in private practice with office locations in San Francisco’s Financial District and Palo Alto in Silicon Valley.
My experience over the years has included work as a Psychologist for the U.S. Navy at Moffett Field Naval Air Station (now closed); providing family and individual therapy for the Family Service Agency of the Mid-Peninsula; Consulting Psychologist for Consultants for International Living in New York City (conducting individual and family assessments for international working and living assignments); an Employee Assistance (EAP) Psychologist for the Drug Enforcement Agency Unit in San Francisco; an EAP Psychologist for Human Affairs International; and as an EAP Psychologist for Harris-Rothenberg EAP on Wall Street, NYC.
As a Consulting Psychologist I have assisted organizational clients, including law firms and financial institutions, in designing and conducting performance assessments and leadership coaching. As a presenter for the California State Bar Educational Institute I have delivered many conference presentations on a variety of topics relevant to the field of Labor and Employment Law such as Substance Abuse in the Workplace, Sexual Harassment, Mental Illness in the workplace; Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction; and the Psychology of Discrimination as it relates to the elimination of bias in the workplace. As a psychological consultant in the field of Labor and Employment Law I have administered medical legal evaluations for disability cases, conducted fitness for duty evaluations and given expert testimony in legal cases.
AVACA Wisdom Institute: I am currently a consulting Psychologist for AVACA Wisdom Institute. AVACA (Abuse, Violence, Anger Cessation Alliance) is a mental health education program that offers classes in Anger Cessation, Stress Reduction/ Health Realization, Addiction Recovery education, and a 52-week court ordered Batters Intervention Program. The teaching model used is “The Universal Approach to Mental Health” using the principals of Thought, Consciousness and Mind to free ourselves from old habitual ways of negative thinking that cause distressing feelings and self-defeating behaviors.
There are many new developments in the field of mental health treatment in the last ten years that are very interesting and exciting. I have always been very eager to learn new ways of relating to and helping the people I work with as the field of psychological treatment evolves.
Major developments in our field have taken place as a result of a great volume of neurological research in the past 15 years especially. It is showing us the effectiveness of certain therapeutic modalities to relieve self-induced suffering caused by our thinking and perception. The brain as well as the body, research has shown, to be flexible, constantly changing and self-healing. This research has shown that the power of thoughts create the reality that we experience. Our natural gift of consciousness awareness can change neurological pathways that carry negative thoughts, beliefs and perceptions. Peace of mind and freedom from emotional distress is closer than we think.
Advances in Cognitive Behavioral treatment include Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy as a way to render old negative thought patterns that cause depression, anxiety and insecurity much less powerful and real. Mindfulness is based in the principles of Buddhist Psychology and is being used widely for pain, stress and emotional healing.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) continues to be very effective in treating Panic, Phobias and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and is being utilized more to access and reinforce positive resources that we already have in our lives.
The development of the Universal Approach to Mental Health teaches the principles of Mind, Thought and Consciousness to awaken our experience of the present moment and how to use our innate Inner Wisdom to free ourselves from conditioned beliefs that cause emotional distress.
And the newer interest and use of Energy Psychology, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), to release negative beliefs and feeling states through the use of tapping the body’s emotional energy meridians in a precise sequence.
There are more exciting developments than I have mentioned here, but these areas are the ones that I am most familiar with as I help people reduce emotional suffering such as anxiety, depression, anger, stress and addictive behavior, but to realize and experience peace of mind and positive emotions in the present moment.
Specializing in the treatment of:
- Anxiety Disorders: panic attacks, phobias, PTSD, OCD, and Generalized Anxiety
- Depressive Disorders: situational and chronic depression,
Bi-Polar disorders, grief, insecurity and low self-worth
- Anger cessation therapy
- Relationship and family issues including couples therapy
- Recovery from addictions and compulsive behavior
- Work stress issues; work disability evaluations
- Insomnia and stress related physical condition
I do bill insurance companies and if I am a provider for a PPO you would have a standard co-pay. If I am not a provider for your insurance company and you have a PPO plan, you can reimburse me directly and I will bill them electronically for each visit so the turn around will be as efficient as possible. Most common insurance companies that I bill for clients are:
- Aetna
- Blue Cross/ Blue Shield PPO
- Cigna
- Great West
- Health Net/ Managed Health Network
- Magellan
- Medicare
- United Behavioral Health
- Value Options
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