Growth Oriented Psychotherapy

Sasha von Varga has been working with children, adolescents, and families on the North Shore since 1994. He is a licensed clinical social worker with a specialty in child and adolescent psychiatric issues. His professional experience has been working with children, adolescents, and families to address anxieties, mood disorders, personality issues, and difficult transitions and adjustments to situations like divorce, frequent moves, school changes, behavioral challenges and family conflict.

Sasha provides therapy to kids and consultation and collaboration to parents to help them face the unexpected challenges that create havoc in their relationships. Teaching kids to develop strategies and coping skills to manage the real stresses in their lives promotes their sense of mastery and competence to flourish, which is essential. Helping kids identify the issues that create inner turmoil helps free them to seek positive solutions. Helping parents understand the experiences of their children and their own reactions in context helps mitigate the chaos that often results when parent and child engage, and improves communication. Helping parents and their kids manage the conflicts related to rules, expectations, and limits, and fears related to navigating the world (anxiety), and the external pressures (stress) that come to bear, helps restore relationships and esteem that go awry.

Sasha works with adults and couples in a relational context to help them create positive changes in their lives.

His goal is to help clients find inner resources to navigate the complexities of their experience to better manage the demands of their lives with greater energy and a sense of mastery and stability. Sasha has worked in community mental health organizations, in hospital-based inpatient child and adolescent psychiatric settings, in day treatment and outpatient programs, at therapeutic day school settings, and in private clinical practice.

Insurance Information

Sasha does not participate in any insurance panels or group insurance plans. As an Out-Of-Network provider, licensed in Illinois to practice clinical social work, you can often obtain significant reimbursement for therapy services. You should always call your insurance carrier to determine what services they will pay for and for what type of provider (Ph.D or LCSW or MD) and at what rate so there are no surprises.

For people who participate in a Flexible spending FSA or HSA account through their employer or insurance carrier, my therapy services are eligible expenses and will apply to that allocation of before tax dollars.

Availability:

Currently my therapy practice has some available hours after school hours and on Saturdays. Therapy times are a 50 minute session that generally start on the hour, and are eligible for out-of-network insurance reimbursement. Divorce Coaching or Mediation sessions are generally 1.5 to 2 hours long and are not considered a therapeutic practice.

Feel Free to call or email me at the address provided to schedule an appointment or to talk about whether my practice is a good fit for you.

Growth focused psychotherapy

Children

Parents bring their children to therapy when the things that should be going well are not. A child feeling anxious or having difficulty sleeping, struggling to get through the day, feeling overwhelmed by school and homework- feeling depressed, socially withdrawn and isolated... these are among the many circumstances that face children more and more in our ever quickening pace of life. The expectations and demands on children to accomplish ordinary tasks become too much- they feel like no matter what they do, they cannot meet the challenges that everyone tells them they should be able to meet. Then they feel stuck and immobilized. Their sense of their own ability to manage disappears.

Children who experience anxiety, worry, mood difficulties, bullying, trauma, and other challenges that exceed their level of developmental competency DO NOT KNOW what to do and need help learning to manage those moments effectively. Parents who see their children suffering and who work with teachers and other professionals to help their children also struggle with how to help. Seeing a therapist can help identify what is happening at the child's level, and clinicians can help assess whether anxiety or mood related issues or other circumstances are coming to bear on your child's ability to function. The experience of traumas, frequent moves, major changes in relationships or losses experienced by the child can hamper their ability to organize to manage day-to-day life. With some professional support, Parents can help their children develop resilience and the skills necessary to feel competent and masterful over their life challenges.

It is important to remember that children are resilient and can learn to be capable and effective and masterful over their life circumstances. Provided they feel they can be effective and that their sense of esteem and value is encouraged, children can overcome a great deal. Having relationships with trusted family members and other helpers ( teachers, therapist, role-models, and mentors, etc) children can internalize a healthy approach to meeting their daily challenges. Their sense of self renews as an empowered, strengthened responsive force .

Adults

Adults come to therapy for many of the same reasons as children- somthing isn't going the way it's supposed to. Relationships with others, experience of ones' self, experience with work or career issues, difficulty with staying on track with the demands of every day life. Having a place to go and talk about the things that are not going as expected is the first step toward accessing the internal resources to make healthy lasting changes that make people feel more capable, enriched by their daily efforts, and life feels more rewarding and fulfilling.

Relationships:

When relationships break down, it's usually a breakdown or absence in the ability to communicate effectively about needs and wants in the relationship, or feeling that the others in your life do NOT hear you. For couples and families, therapy as a unit facing relationship strain is very effective in helping to resolve intrenched hurts and miscommunications. For parents and teens it's about clarifying expectations and negotiating terms of the working relationship of communal living and respect. For couples, it's often about creating the intimacy that erodes when the terms of the working relationship feel skewed or imbalanced. Then there's history- where we come from, what "I'm used to" and "who's right". Those things are best addressed together. Individual threapy is about "ME" and couples or family therapy is about "WE".