About: 

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Amanda is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and a mother of 4, plus 2 children from a blended partnership.  She is a Silicon Valley native and currently working towards the completion of her doctoral degree in counseling education and supervision. Amanda specializes in working with couples who want to strengthen their lives and relationships through positive communication, conflict management, and improvement in intimacy as well as self-care, so they are able to continue to care for others.

 

Using a non-judgmental, strength-based approach, Amanda guides couples in finding solutions to problems, while also maintaining a safe and supportive space where couples can communicate safely and openly about the fears that paralyze them, such as fear of loss, disappointment, rejection, and loss of self.

 

Blended Families

As a biological mother of 4 and a step-mom of 2 wonderful children from a blended partnership, Amanda has lived the blended family experience.  She understands that a blended family can be both a rewarding and challenging experience.

 

While you and your new spouse may be ready to make this transition, your children may resist the change, causing frustration for you as the parent. Amanda helps blended family couples approach their new parenting experience with open communication, mutual respect, compassion, and love.  She works with individuals, couples, and the family system as a whole to develop the new stepparent-stepchild bond and form an affectionate and successful blended family while avoiding common mistakes made that can often set family members up for confusion, frustration, and disappointment.

 

Amanda uses a structured solution-focused approach that will fit your special circumstances to help with initial planning of the blended family, bonding with your new blended family through the use of routines and rituals to bond and helping children with adjustment, and working through potential blended family challenges to strengthen and creating clear boundaries, along with co-parenting coaching, and positive communication skills.

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Co-Parenting

After 5 years of co-parenting with her ex-husband, she understands the difficulties and emotional turmoil that arise for individuals when co-parenting with an ex-spouse.

Using tools specifically tailored for co-parenting, she has helped guide parents through the rough waters and creates a child-centered co-parenting and conflict management plan for your unique situation .​

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Other Specialties:

•    Addictions
•    Affair Recovery
•    Anger Management
•    Borderline Personality
•    Couples relationships
•    Family Conflict
•    Life Transitions
•    Men’s issues
•    Premarital counseling
•    Parenting/ Co-parenting
•    Parent-Adolescent conflict
•    Sex Therapy/ Sexuality

 

Clients: 

Couples and families, adults, adolescents, first responders, men, individuals questioning or exploring their sexual identities.

 

Modalities:

•    Coaching
•    Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
•    Gottman Method
•    Internal Family Systems (IFS)
•    Solution Focused Brief (SFBT)
•    Strength-Based
•    Structural Family Therapy

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License:

Registered Associate, MFTA #126006

Supervised by Dr. Harry Motro, LMFT #53452

Employed by New Path Couples Therapy Inc.

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Contact:

abuckman.therapy@gmail.com

Phone: (415) 805-6759

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