About The Passion Doctor Website
The Passion Doctor website was created by Dr. Adam Sheck to support individuals and couples to create more passion in their lives and in their relationships. For singles, the focus is to support them in finding the inspiration to having the career and relationship of their dreams. For couples the focus is about re-igniting their Passion, Romance, Intimacy and Sexuality.
Fast Start: Read my collection of key articles to learn the basics of improving your relationship (Click Here To Read Them) . The articles are aimed to help you with all aspects of relationship, from understanding how they begin to creating the relationship you’ve always dreamed of having.
Who Is Dr. Adam Sheck?
Below are excerpts from an interview that will give you a feel for who I am and why I am in the field of Psychology and Couples Counseling.
Why did you become a psychologist?
My first career was in computers and engineering. I received an undergraduate degree from MIT and then a Master’s degree from USC in Systems Management (an MBA for technical people). I entered marriage therapy over twenty-five years ago, when problems surfaced in my marriage. Unfortunately, we couldn’t work the relationship out. However, I continued in individual psychotherapy and learned a great deal about my own inner process.
Eventually this motivated me to return to graduate school, complete my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and become a licensed Clinical Psychologist. I believe that the possession of an analytic, scientifically-trained mind combined with my emotional intelligence and deep empathy make me a very unique and effective Psychotherapist and Couples Counselor.
What is your philosophy in working with people?
When our inner experience doesn’t match the outer expression of our life, we aren’t happy and we don’t have passion. I help my clients connect to their deepest dreams and aspirations and remove the blocks to expressing them more fully in their lives. Working with clients for more than twenty years, I’ve accrued many techniques to accomplish this, though my biggest lesson over that time is that the work is NOT about technique, it’s about being fully present with my clients to create a safe space where authenticity and passion can express itself. From that place, anything can happen!
What is your training in couples counseling?
I originally began my psychology studies with a Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) Program and received a Master’s Degree in MFT. I therefore met the education requirements for a Marriage and Family Therapist and also accumulated over 1500 hours of supervised training in MFT. I then decided to pursue my Doctorate and become a licensed Clinical Psychologist. To fulfill the State licensing requirements from the California Board of Psychology, I then accrued over 3000 hours of supervised Psychology training hours. Between the two, I received over 4500 hours of supervised training before I even became licensed as a Clinical Psychologist.
Wanting to specialize in Couples Counseling, I then went through a rigorous year-long post-licensure training process to become Certified in Imago Relationship Therapy. Imago Relationship Therapy utilizes a variety of clinical techniques to teach couples (as well as singles desiring an intimate union) to identify their defenses against intimacy and to understand the unconscious forces that influence partner selection and stressors in committed relationships. The goal of the therapy is to create a conscious, mature, loving relationship. If you’d like a more detailed description of Imago, please click here.
What makes you different than other Psychotherapists and Coaches conducting Couples Therapy?
In addition to my extensive formal training, as described above, I am basically a very enthusiastic teacher. My experience is that we truly learn something as we teach it. And being a Psychologist, much of my work is teaching my clients, sometime directly, sometimes by example, sometime unconsciously. I take the derivation of the word, “education” from the Latin, “educare” meaning “to draw out” very seriously. I’m not there to put information into you, I am there to help you discover what is already inside, what you already know. Once I help you to connect to yourself, you will be able to take the appropriate action
My experience as a teacher is not only through my practice of psychotherapy. I have been teaching couples and family therapy at graduate programs in Marriage and Family Therapy and in Clinical Psychology since 1998. And, I have been involved in Community Mental Health since 2000 and conduct the Couples Training Program at a Community Mental Health Center in Los Angeles, where I train the psychotherapists of tomorrow in how to work with couples.
So, besides the 100’s of couples I have personally worked with since 1991, I have supervised 100’s of couples cases that my psychology and MFT interns have worked with. I’ve seen a lot of couples with a lot of different conditions and problems and issues. Having worked for four years in a residential drug treatment center also has helped me, as many couples are impacted by alcohol and drug abuse. At this point in my career, there are very few couples issues that I haven’t worked with successfully before.
What is your philosophy and approach towards working with couples?
My job is to put couples into connection with each other. To hold that space so that they can connect honestly and openly. From there, they will know how they want their relationship to be and where it needs to go. I am fully committed to using my skill and experience in helping the couple on the next step of their “couple journey.” This sounds easy, but it’s not. It really does take a psychotherapist who’s been trained in couples work AND who’s worked with hundreds of couples over the years to make it happen.
Can you tell whether couples should stay together or break up?
I’ve helped couples discover if they should be together or not. I’ve been working with couples since 1991 and I’ve discovered that I have a terrible track record in predicting who will stay together and who will break up.
And that has taught me that it’s really not my place to decide that for couples! Deep down, each couple knows whether they should be together, what they need to make their relationship work and whether they’re willing to do that.
What I tell couples is that in my experience, couples who love and respect each other and are committed to making their relationship a priority seem to have a much better chance of making the relationship work. That’s a choice each couple has to make. I can help them get to that place of choice and then I can give them the tools to succeed in their relationship if they choose to do so
What is your philosophy and approach towards working with singles on relationship issues?
My work with singles begins with understanding their “relationship blueprint” which is the inner guidance system that defines what we are attracted to. It primarily consists of information that we have all absorbed over time, the most defining data being in the first five years of our life. We define what love looks like and feels like by how we observe our caregivers interacting with each other and with us.
Whether those are so-called “positive” or “negative” traits, they all combine to give us this template. When we meet someone who has enough of these qualities, we fall in love. This may or may not be healthy for us, depending upon that early modeling. Once we understand our blueprint, we have more choice over our partner selection process and can both begin to heal our wounds of childhood as well as maintain healthier relationships
Anything else you’d like us to know?
I’m not a big, impersonal, managed care corporation. I answer my own telephone read my own emails. I’m a man who cares and I want to be able to help more people, which is why I’m learning to use the Internet in order to touch more lives.
But ultimately it’s about people and connecting. And that’s what I love to do. I love to connect with you and help you connect with yourself and those that you love. I really care about my couples and singles and our work together.
To find out more about my work, please click below:
More About My Work And Who I Work With