Marcia Pavlou, Ph.D.

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Special Interests and Qualifications

In addition to a general practice of psychology with adults, I have some specific areas of training and interest. The first arises from my work at Rush Medical Center. I did extensive clinical work, research, and program development with people with ongoing medical problems and with their families. People with serious health problems experience an unusual level of stress, and health trauma. Most people, while emotionally resourceful and healthy, can benefit from the assistance of a mental health professional at some point . Anyone in their right mind is stressed by major illness! The mental health professional can often help the person to bolster their coping skills, needed for the ongoing demands created by health issues. Health problems may include

• Cancer
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Infertility
• Arthritis
• Menopause
• Crohn's Disease and Colitis

My immersion in these issues created a broader point of view and expertise. I developed an interest in people who have psychological resources that are quite normal, but who experience unusual and long term stress. People may live with a long term family problem or an ongoing and stressful work situation. In my work with many hundreds of people with the same condition, I gained a real understanding of the vast array of different ways in which people manage the same life demand. I learned to identify the manner in which people do this. I was impressed with the strength in each style of doing things, and discovered ways to augment what was good rather than looking for what wasn't. This has defined my work much more generally. Stressful life situations may include

• The substantial demands of young adult living.
• Family struggles. Relationship issues, including divorce. Problems with a parent or child. Issues of parenting of young adults.
• Work challenges. Stressors of health care and legal providers. Especially demanding work situations, including those requiring long hours or extensive travel. Work/life balance. Career dissatisfaction or chronic job insecurity.
• Life stage transitions. Stressors of new marriage and live-in situations, issues of new parents, mid-life changes, retirement and aging.

More recently, I developed an interest in issues regarding life meaning, spirituality, and religion. These questions historically were not the realm of psychology, but they often arise as people think and work deeply with themselves and their lives in the context of psychotherapy. I completed certificate training at the Center of Religion and Psychotherapy of Chicago in Psychology and Religion. This training gave me a deeper understanding of questions of life and death, life meaning, etc., and ways to integrate them into other work on life issues. Some people come from very religious backgrounds, and this can create a specific point of view and set of questions. For other people, spiritual lives have unfolded in unique and non-traditional ways. In contemporary culture, questions and needs that are “religious” often arise in areas that are not obvious, not explicitly about faith life, and may actually appear to be quite secular. For example, people may wonder if their life path is meaningful, if they can believe in the goodness of political leaders, if they are leading ethical lives, if they are making a contribution. I am open to these questions, but do not introduce or impose them and have no particular religious agenda. More broadly, my work within a religious context has reinforced my vision of the therapeutic relationship as a highly significant human encounter, a journey of the soul.