Professional Roles
Therapist
Dr. Heitler’s clinical practice focuses on empowering clients to resolve challenges through effective exploration of their emotional triggers plus enhancement of their ability to find solutions to their difficulties. She specializes in treating anxiety, depression, and relationship conflicts, with an emphasis on practical tools for lasting change.
Author
Dr. Heitler details her therapy techniques in her books From Conflict to Resolution: Skills and Strategies for Therapy with Individuals, Couples, and Families and Presciptions Without Pills: For Relief from Depression, Anxiety, Anger, and More.
Dr. Heitler also explains and demonstrates her techniques in two APA-accredited online courses: The Angry Couple: Conflict-Focused Treatment and, most recently, Effective Couples Therapy.
Dr. Heitler’s books for the general public, including the widely acclaimed The Power of Two and its accompanying workbook, The Power of Two Workbook, coach the skills that enable marriage success. Published in seven foreign language editions: Polish, Turkish, Chinese (Taiwan and mainland China), Hebrew, Spanish, and Portuguese (Brazil), her writings have had global impacts.
Speaker and Workshop Leader
A sought-after speaker, Dr. Heitler has been invited to present her engaging and practical workshops for therapists across the US and globally, from Australia, the UAE, Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, and India, to China. Her presentations focus especially on the tools therapist need to effectively teach their clients the process of win-win conflict resolution, on innovative techniques for treating depression, anxiety, anger, and narcissism, and on too-often-overlooked ethical considerations when a therapist is working in individual treatment with a married client.
Innovator and Educator
Dr. Heitler’s conflict-focused conceptual map for guiding therapy integrates multiple treatment approaches. Her unique “Hand Map” clarifies the sources of negative emotional states such as depression, anger, and anxiety.
Dr. Heitler’s blogposts provide unique perspective on many self-help topics, plus information for both the general public and therapy professionals on parental alienation. She explains adult sibling alienation, a term she coined to describe situations in which one adult sibling alienates other family members, usually to gain control of an aging parent’s inheritance directives. Her posts offer a unique perspective on narcissism, that is, that at the core of narcissism is a listening disorder. In addition, her blogposts and videos explaining and illustrating energy therapy techniques introduce this vital new area of treatment.