A couple of days ago, something positive on happened with my 4 year old daughter, which without having seen Dr. Patel, my daughter wouldn't have done. I was trying to put my her to bed and because as usual, she was taking forever and dawdling, I wasn't at my best and got frustrated with her, to the point she had a meltdown. And out of the blue, I was shocked she used a phrase which my wife and I use whenever we have an argument, a technique which Dr. Patel had taught us and helped us practice back many years ago when we originally sought out therapy, like a couples toolkit, before we'd gotten married. But my daughter used this phrase! She's been listening to us and become the unexpected beneficiary of the therapy? Geez. Though Dr. Patel didn't give us parenting advice and we never asked her for it, my kids are better off from our therapy. We ironed out the the stuff we needed to, got married, and stopped therapy. I went back myself for a while for individual, and if I had reviewed Dr. Patel when I first started with her, I would've given her a one star. I went to her because I needed her to fill out a temporary absence from work form. She said no. Seriously? I mean, who does that? She didn't know me, yet off the bat, she refused. She did offer to do an assessment and begin therapy, which meant a lot to me at the time. We started at a weekly clip and slowly, after a couple of months, I started feeling better, and brought in my wife. What helped most was her guiding us on how to deal with my marriage and in-laws. Meanwhile, we had our second baby, which piled on the stress, and again, she came through for me in ways I didn't expect, like doing remote appointments with me and my wife during the pandemic. I appreciated that she was flexible and did sessions with us holding our fussing son. Dr. Patel is chill and pragmatic, for example, she had no issues with my wife feeding our infant during the sessions, and she basically said, "I want to make this work for you, so you do what you need to do." If I'm gonna be honest, it felt weirdly good to have her remember pretty much every single thing we've ever told her, to the point when it felt a bit creepy because she'd use exactly the word in my head. I realized that she listens to us with almost laser-like scalpel precision, which as an engineer, I appreciated. Sometimes even when I felt like we were meandering and wasting time, she always steered us back to exactly where we needed to go. I'd done therapy before but this feels like another level up. Over time, not only did I, but my wife also grew to trust her to guide us through a tough time. I'm getting so much more than I ever thought, like she remembers not only my history but also my wife's, and every single detail of each of our extended families and friends, even colleagues. She has a crazy memory, freaky to the point of remembering stuff we'd said years ago, reminding us of things we've shared. All of this somehow she weaves together in a way that actually makes sense, and gives us kind of a blueprint as we can use. Sometimes, she's very blunt: has straight up said, "No way can you expect this--it's unrealistic and will get you nowhere. Instead let's try this." And then she'd give us some kind of stuff to work on and practice with each other between sessions. Way cool. The worst thing I could've done was to take time off (other than paternity leave), and if she'd filled out those disability papers, I never would've found my strength. I'm not sure if she's seeing patients in her office because we've been doing video, which though I had initial doubts about, it worked out better than in person because if gave us flexibility. The only thing about Dr. Patel is that it's kinda hard to get a 'read' on her, meaning she's approachable, and friendly, very personable, but just when I'm not expecting it, she comes out with something disarmingly direct and forceful. I've grown to know her so it's fine. But in the beginning, it was something stylistic I had to get used to. Though my wife in her individual appointments with her, has had a totally different experience with Dr. Patel, so maybe she treats each person differently. In fact, I vaguely remember her saying something to that effect. So this review has become a runaway thing, I'll stop here with the conclusion that our entire family has a better life from seeing her. read more