Doris Schmalhofer – Clinical Psychologist

Portrait of Doris Schmalhofer

Psychotherapy

I am a licensed clinical psychologist who works with individuals (adults, children and adoloscents), couples and families in my practice in Kaiserslautern. I have experience treating all psychiatric disorders, especially Depression, Anxiety Disorders, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, chronic pain, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, ADHD, Eating Disorders, Oppositional- Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Parasuicides, Personality Disorders including Borderline Personality Disorder, Psychoses and Enuresis.

Psychotherapy can offer a unique opportunity to develop a new understanding of how past experiences have influenced one's current emotions, thoughts and behaviors, and thus enable one to break out of undesirable life patterns, so that one can move forward and make desirable changes in one's life.

Psychotherapies

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

CBT is a psychotherapeutic approach in which the focus is on helping the patient to help himself/herself, by examing the cause/history of the problem and giving him/her specific techniques to modify maladaptive thinking and behavior and thus reduce emotional distress.

More detailed information on CBT can be found on Wikipdia.

Schema Therapy

Schema therapy is a relatively new therapeutic approach, which integrates concepts and elements of cognitive therapy, behavior therapy, object relations, transactional analysis and gestalt therapy into one unified, systematic approach to treatment.

Schema therapy assumes that schemas (patterns of thinking and feeling) usually develop early in life, although they also can form later in adulthood. Behaviors are thought to be driven by schemas, which can either be healthy or maladaptive. Maladaptive Schemas develop as a result of painful (childhood) experiences, expecially when core emotional needs (in childhood) are not met. As a result, patterns of negative/dysfunctional thoughts and feelings develop, which pose obstacles for accomplishing one's goals and getting one's needs met. The goal of Schema Therapy is to replace maladaptive schemas with more healthy schemas.

More detailed information on Schema Therapy can be found on Wikipdia.

Imagery Rescripting & Reprocessing Therapy

IRRT is an imagery-based CBT technique which aims to change the lingering images, thoughts, feelings and beliefs about an experienced trauma.

More detailed information on IRRT can be found on the following website.

Pain Management

Pain management helps patients understand the relationship between one's physiology, thought, emotions, and behaviors. The goal is to improve the quality of life by encouraging helpful thought patterns and by developing better coping skills for pain and other stressors.

More detailed information on Pain Management can be found on the following website.

Family Systems Therapy/Systemic Therapy

Family systems therapy and systemic therapy emphasize (family) relationships as an important factor in psychological health. It seeks to identify stagnant interactional patterns and dynamics in groups of people such as a family and tries to help systems to change themselves by introducing creative "nudges".

More detailed information on Systemic Therapy can be found on Wikipdia.

Job Experience

  • private practice since 2007
  • clinical psychologist (part-time) in a juvenile detention home since 2007 (Internationer Bund – Jugendheim Mühlkopf, Rodalben)
  • clinical psychologist (part-time) in a home for traumatized/neglected/abused children and adolescents from 1999 - 2010 (CJD Jugenddorf Wolfstein; Wolfstein)
  • 1½ years experience as a clinical psychologist in the psychosomatic ward of a hospital (Westpfalz-Klinikums, Kaiserslautern
  • 3 years experience in a private practice in Bad Dürkheim

Qualifications