Frequently Asked Questions
These are the questions people actually ask me on the phone. They are answered here so the fifteen minutes can go somewhere more useful.
Logistics
Your kitchen table, mostly.
Acoustic Family Therapy is a fully virtual practice. My office is whatever room you are sitting in, as long as you are physically in California. No parking structure, no waiting room, no 40 minutes on the freeway for a 55-minute appointment.
What matters more than the address is the room you pick on your end. Somewhere with a door that closes. Somewhere you can say a true thing out loud without lowering your voice.
You get a link. You click it a minute or two before we start.
That is the whole technical part.
The clinical part is less different than people expect. I can see your face, I can hear the change in your voice, and I can see what your shoulders do when a subject comes up.
For the body-based work I do, video turns out to be fine. I am mostly asking what you notice rather than watching you from across a room.
Couples are the pleasant surprise. Sitting on your own couch, in the room where most of this happens, tends to work better than driving across town separately and arriving already annoyed.
The platform is secure and HIPAA compliant. Please use headphones if there are other people in the house.
55 minutes for individuals. 75 minutes for couples.
Schedule a free 15-minute call.
From there, if it feels right to both of us, we schedule a first session, and I send the paperwork. That is genuinely the whole process.
It is short on purpose.
The hardest part of starting therapy is usually the deciding, not the logistics.
Fifteen minutes on the phone before you commit to anything.
You tell me roughly what is going on. I ask a few questions. Then I tell you honestly what I think, including whether I am the right person for it.
If I am not, I will try to point you toward someone who is. I would rather do that in 15minutes than in six weeks.
You are also interviewing me, which people forget. Ask me anything. How I work, what I would do with your particular situation, what I am like when a session gets hard.
The research is consistent that the relationship between therapist and client predicts outcome better than any technique does. So your read on me is real clinical information, not just a vibe check.
How I Work
Adults, 18 and up.
Men, women, and couples. No adolescents.
Most of my clients land in a few groups: couples who have gone quiet with each other, high-functioning people whose insight has stopped helping them, artists and musicians who have stopped making things, and people navigating a life lived between two cultures.
If you do not see yourself on that list, we should still talk.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California, license #164695.
Somatic and experiential work, informed by Somatic Experiencing, alongside attachment-based couples therapy including Emotionally Focused Therapy. I trained in these through graduate and doctoral coursework and use them daily.
I am not certified in either, and I would rather say that plainly than let a credential do work it has not earned.
In practice, it means I pay attention to what your body is doing while you talk.
I bring in creative and expressive material when it helps. Music, images, writing, film. Sometimes a song gets closer than a paragraph.
PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy from Alliant International University, where I now teach in the graduate program.
My doctoral research was on filmmaking as a clinical intervention.
Yes, and I will usually answer.
I am not a blank screen. If knowing something about me is useful to you, ask. Where I am from, whether I have been through something like what you are describing, what I think about your situation.
I will tell you when the honest answer is that my experience is not relevant to yours. Your hour does not become a conversation about me.
The one thing I will not do is pretend to have no reactions. You would be able to tell anyway.
Mine is excellent. Yours is the one we should talk about.
Since we meet online, you get to pick the chair. That is one of the underrated advantages.
Sit somewhere you feel comfortable. If your favorite spot in the house is a beat up armchair with a blanket on it, that is a better therapy chair than anything I could buy.
The 15 Minutes
Fifteen minutes is not much to spend on a decision this size.
Schedule a free 15-minute call. Call (805) 635-2153 or email mshahisaman@gmail.com.
Start with 15 Minutes on the Phone
Before you commit to anything, you tell me roughly what is going on. I ask a few questions. Then I tell you honestly what I think, including whether I am the right person for it.
If I am not, I will try to point you toward someone who is, and I would rather do that in fifteen minutes than in six weeks. You are also interviewing me.
We will talk about what is not moving, and what it would take to move it.