Current Scholarly Interests and Specialties
Divorce/Separation and its impact on Children and Families- Dr. Davis provides custody evaluations, brief focused evaluations, child custody court recommending mediation for families referred by the court. Also, Dr. Davis provides parenting coordination (also known as special master) services to families, and specialized child focused family psychotherapy services to families where a parent and/or child might be alienated or estranged from each other.
Multi-cultural Adoption- Dr. Davis provide psychotherapy and/or consultation to trans-racial and trans-cultural families of adoption. A primary focus of this work is to help children and families reconcile gender, racial and sexual orientation differences within and outside the family. Additionally, Dr. Davis helps children and families deal with discrimination. Lastly, Dr. Davis helps each member in the family understand and manage the various layers of loss that pervades many families of adoption.
Families That Have "Adult Children" Living at Home-Dr. Davis specializes in working with families that have adult children (i.e., adults typically between the ages of 18 and 25) living at home. In this context, Dr. Davis helps both the parents and the adult (former child) establish new boundaries, expectations and roles. This transition is not easy as many young adults and their parents fall back into roles and patterns from the adolescent or earlier periods of family life. As a result, both the young adult and parents feel frustrated and "stuck" and often say harmful things to each other. To offset this participation in family therapy often helps young adults and their parents stay away from falling into old family patterns that may have been appropriate during an earlier developmental period but do not bode well for the new relationship wherein everyone is an adult.
Challenges of the Adolescent Period-Dr. Davis helps families adjusts to what many consider a very turbulent period for every family member--not just the adolescent. Areas and topics addressed in family psychotherapy are typically as follows: respecting self and other family members, peer pressure, drugs, separation/individuation, maintaining a healthy relationship with parents.
Complex Trauma-Dr. Davis specializes in working with adults and children who experienced trauma in their family of origin. This includes but it not limited to domestic abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, physical violence, abandonment, ambiguous loss, and the unexpected loss of a loved one.
K-12, College Student-Athletes and Professional Athletes-Dr. Davis specializes in providing supportive services to athletes and their families (i.e., children, parents, siblings and spouse). Specifically, Dr. Davis helps athletes and their families establish and maintain healthy coping strategies to deal with an array of very unique challenges and stressors. For instance, many athletes and their families often find it difficult to "stay connected" given the demands of the athlete's schedule and work (or school for the college student athlete) obligations. Consequently, these circumstances put undue strain on many athletes' and their families' relationships. Furthermore, if not approached and deal with in a proactive fashion, these circumstances only worsen resulting in athletes and their family members feeling "disconnected" and isolated from each other.
Therapeutic Drumming-Dr. Davis and his mentor, Jesus Diaz, master percussionist and professional musician, provide therapeutic drumming to individuals, small groups, large groups and organizations. These groups are aimed at helping people strengthen team building within organizations, regulate negative emotions, reduce stress, find inner peace, gain confidence and connect with like-minded others. It is Dr. Davis's opinion that many people have difficulty talking about their emotional difficulties in a more traditional "talk therapy" setting. Thus, therapeutic drumming provides an alternative to a more traditional psychotherapy for many people in that they have an opportunity to get into touch with and begin to process strong emotions (both negative and positive).
Animal Assisted Therapy-In 2015, Dr. Davis was introduced to the amazing and wonderful world of equine assisted therapy and horsemanship at Transitioning Families, a program located in Sonoma County, California, that serves adults, children, and families who have experienced trauma. Currently, he participates in horsemanship training on a weekly basis and, when warranted, he incorporates his work with horses into his psychotherapeutic work.
Animal Assisted Therapy-In 2015, Dr. Davis was introduced to the amazing and wonderful world of equine assisted therapy and horsemanship at Transitioning Families, a program located in Sonoma County, California, that serves adults, children, and families who have experienced trauma. Currently, he participates in horsemanship training on a weekly basis and, when warranted, he incorporates his work with horses into his psychotherapeutic work.
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