Phyllis Klaus, MFT, LCSW, is a licensed psychotherapist and social worker. She teaches and practices at the Milton H. Erickson Institute in Santa Rosa, California, and also practices in Berkeley, California, providing psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and counseling to individuals, couples, families, children and groups. She has worked with the concerns, both medical and psychosocial, of pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period for the past 30 years, and has been involved in research and training of maternity caregivers. She is also a founder of DONA International.
Much of her clinical management in the perinatal period has focused on the following: 1) women with a history of childhood sexual abuse and its effects on childbearing; 2) the use of hypnosis and brief psychotherapy to alleviate clinical symptoms of pregnancy such as premature labor, hyperemesis gravidarum, bleeding; and the psychological issues of anxiety and depression; 3) attachment disorders; 4) issues of birth trauma and loss; 5) postpartum mood disorders; and 6) methods of pain relief in labor with self-hypnosis. In addition, she has a general practice with extensive experience working with grief and loss; trauma; abuse; dissociative disorders; anxiety; depression; somatic and medical disorders and conditions; family of origin; attachment and parent-child issues.
She is a National Board Certified Fellow in Clinical Hypnotherapy and Fellow in the American Psychotherapy Association, as well as the American Academy of Experts of Traumatic Stress. She is an EMDR Institute Facilitator, and Trainer, an EMDRIA Approved Consultant, and has incorporated EMDR into her work for the past 17 years. She consults and presents lectures and workshops on psychotherapy, hypnotherapy and EMDR nationally and internationally.
Phyllis Klaus is co-author of several articles as well as Mothering the Mother, Your Amazing Newborn, Bonding, The Doula Book, When Survivors Give Birth, and a video, The Amazing Talents of the Newborn.
Contact Phyllis by e-mail at phyllisklaus@aol.com or by telephone at 510-559-8000.