Merry Frons


Merry Frons Ph.Dc, LCSW is a licensed psychotherapist with a private practice in New York City specializing in relationship issues for couples and individuals. She is a Board Certified Clinical Sexologist, AASECT certified sex therapist, Diplomate of the American Board of Sexology as well as a Certified Imago relationship therapist. She is certified in EMDR and trained in clinical hypnosis.

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Couples Counseling and Therapy



With over 20 years of counseling experience, Merry understands the changing dynamics of relationships over time and is able to help couples break out of unproductive patterns and establish new, healthier and more satisfying ways of relating and sharing their lives.

She has helped couples overcome the rough patches in their relationships to move from disappointment to rebuilding a union with increased love, support, intimacy and respect.

Imago Therapy is one technique that teaches specific, easily learned strategies that allows couples to communicate in a safe, effective way that resolves conflicts and increases intimacy.

We also use techniques and teachings from family systems, psychodynamic and object relations theory as well as the cognitive restructuring techniques of CBT and DBT, the information procesessing of EMDR, Sue Johnson's Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy and techniques from Merry's post graduate work in clinical sexuality.

Solutions

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is concerned with the role of thinking in how we feel and behave. There are several approaches to CBT including dialectic behavioral therapy and rational emotive therapy. They all focus on identifying maladaptive patterns of thinking and work to replace them with cognitions that promote a more effective approach to problematic issues.

Psychodynamic Therapy

This school of psychotherapy stresses a therapeutic relationship in which the clinician guides the client through stages of increasing insight into relationships with significant others and the social environment. At the same time, the therapist helps the client focus on acquiring additional skills that result in resolution of conflicts, increased fulfillment and improved relations with others.

Family Therapy

Family Therapy uses a range of counseling techniques including psychodynamic, cognitive, communication theory and family systems theory. This branch of psychotherapy views the family as a system where interactions are governed by each member’s role with that family system. The therapist usually meets with several family members at the same time and assists the family in increasing its awareness of the roles of each member and how the interactions among family members affect individual behaviors. The therapist’s suggestions may trigger changes throughout the family system and often result in improved family functioning and greater harmony among its members.

Marriage Therapy/Couples Therapy

Marriage Therapy, Couples Therapy Marital and Couples Counseling can help in identifying the specific issues and dynamics that are causing problems in a relationship. Through the counseling process one can learn to stop destructive interactions before they become entrenched and learn new ways of relating. Couples Therapy can be helpful when two people are locked in an impasse that they can’t seem to break out of. A therapist can be helpful in identifying the destructive dynamic and naming specific behavioral strategies that enable the individuals to respond differently to each other and move toward successful resolution of often long-standing issues. Many times it takes only a limited number of sessions for couples to experience profound changes in their daily interactions.

EMDR

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) was discovered and developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro in 1987. EMDR was been validated and supported as effective in the treatment of trauma by many studies. EMDR is referred to as an information processing therapy which integrates the approaches of many psychotherapies in a highly specific protocol. Elements from psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, interpersonal, experiential and body-centered therapies are included in the process in which the client focuses on a past and present experience while simultaneously focusing on an external stimuli designed to activate the body’s own healing mechanisms.