Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life.
Gibran Khalil Gibran
Welcome to my webpage. My name is Dr. Lama Khouri. I am a cross-cultural psychoanalyst working with the expatriate community, international students, and newly arrived immigrants. I work individually with adults and adolescents , I also work with couples.
I share Gibran’s statement above, because it describes my goal when working with you: I see my practice as a safe space and a unique environment, where we could uncover your truth and find the best tools to help you be content in your everyday life.
I created this website to share with you information about my practice, about psychotherapy as a whole and about the struggles many of us have to face in our lifetime.
Our problems in living
All of us humans have a problem to solve. It could be specific–a relationship, a job, a tormenting thought that won’t go away, trouble with food or drink, a death, a marriage. Or it could be more enigmatic – a vague feeling something is wrong, a heaviness of spirit, a blank in the mind. Or perhaps it is as simple, and as complex and universal, as the need to make sense of life..
About psychotherapy
Even when we are clear about our problems, solutions are often elusive and harder to hold. Traversing life’s impasses requires, compassionate attention, steadfast effort, and care. Psychotherapy would give you a chance to delve into your complexity and depth and sufferings in the presence of another person—a professional in your corner, a witness whose presence makes your struggle bearable.
Anxiety
Anxiety is one of the most common issues we humans encounter. At times, it is just free-floating: we don’t know why we feel anxious, but we do. Other times, there is a real reason that is making us anxious: fear of failure, being overwhelmed with life, fear of losing someone, or being in a world that leaves you dumbfounded. The reasons are endless.
Sadness/Depression
You may be waking up every morning with a lump in your throat, or a pain in your heart. Perhaps, during the day, there are moments when the pain is so great, you feel you are about to cry. Or maybe nothing brings you joy. You may be very sad because you lost someone, you feel lonely, you are facing a difficulty in life you have not anticipated.
Difficult relationships.
You may be in a relationship with a partner, a spouse a friend, a co-worker or a boss, that brings you much anguish, angers you, or just a pain in your side. Can it get better? Should you leave? Are you in the wrong? Can you have a fulfilling life? Is it your pattern or your partner's?
Issues around food
Food is such an emotionally loaded matter. Eating, be it overeating or undereating, means many things to different people. Often it is about comfort, perhaps you eat when you are bored, or sad, or happy. Perhaps you undereat because you want to be thinner, or you feel life is chaotic and this is the one thing you have control over, or maybe you are simply afraid of eating. Overeating or undereating are not moral issues, they are a symptom of something deeper.