I am Dr. Barbara Cunningham, Clinical Psychologist and Marriage & Family Therapist (MFT) and I can help:

As a marriage and family therapist located in the heart of San Diego, I enjoy a thriving private practice. I love my work with couples and individuals and view the decision to enter into psychotherapy as a courageous one. My style is warm and engaging. I will at times hold "your feet to the fire" and you may experience the counseling experience as enlightening, insightful and even challenging. I believe that the therapy room should be a safe holding environment for both tears and laughter. Humor is often present in my sessions, as I believe it provides a lightness of spirit that can aid a client or couple in getting more objective and solution-focused in their efforts. I encourage my clients to read a couple of books to enlighten them about family systems principles and clients are asked to apply systemic ideas to their lives in between sessions. Thus, our therapy effort is collaborative. Clients are expected to take an active part in the therapeutic journey from the beginning.

My expertise is in treating individuals and couples who are experiencing problems in their relationships or who simply want to empower themselves to improve the quality of their lives. I practice from a family systems model. This means that I believe that problems are always co-created. In other words, there is no blame. And one can change their dance steps in relation to another and shift the entire dynamic of the relationship. This is an empowering concept! The aim in couples therapy is to help partners achieve the creation of a safer, more secure bond while at the same time learning to recognize where they stop and their partner begins. Learning what triggers one's reactivity, learning about how the past is playing out in the present, and identifying multigenerational patterns are among a few of the learning opportunities in this model of therapy. I think of this model of practice as a 'thinking person's" therapy. It is all about getting more facts about one's functioning in relationships, whether in one's personal or professional life.