• Overview

    NYC

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    • Grew up in New York City
    • Moved to Massachusetts as a young adult
    • Studied Spanish and worked in Latin America
    • Lived and worked in Barcelona, Spain
    • Returned to Boston
    • Moved to Newburyport

  • 1985-1999 Employment

    Your Label

    • English Teacher in Barcelona, Spain

  • Your Label

    • Outpatient Counselor at a Substance Abuse Treatment Center in East Boston

  • Your Label

    • Outpatient Therapist on the cross-cultural team of a community mental health center in Salem, Massachusetts

  • 1999-2003 General Private Practice

    General

    • Started a general private practice in Newburyport, Massachusetts, working with children, teens and adults, using cognitive and behavioral methods.

  • 2003-present Anxiety Specialty Practice

    Your Label

    • Transition from general to specialty private practice, dedicated to the treatment of obsessional spectrum disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in particular.

  • Education

    Education

    • B.A. Psychology- University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts

    • M.Ed. Counseling Psychology - Cambridge College, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1990)

  • 2003-2004 Training

    Gail Steketee

    Specialty:Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
    Consultant:Gail Steketee, Ph.D.

    I trained privately with Dr. Gail Steketee over a period of 18 months. Dr. Steketee, a clinical researcher and then professor of psychology at Boston University, is an internationally recognized expert in obsessive compulsive disorder. During this time, I received weekly consultation and training from Dr. Steketee in the application of the cognitive therapy manual that she and colleague Sabine Wilhelm had developed for the treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder.

    Dr. Steketee stopped her consultation work, and introduced me to Dr. Kieron O'Connor- a clinical researcher and professor of psychology at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada.

  • 2005-present Training

    Your Label

    Specialty:Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
    Consultant:Kieron O'Connor, Ph.D.

    I began to train privately with Dr. O’Connor and his associate Dr. Fred Aardema in the clinical application of the Inferential Based Approach (IBA), an innovative form of cognitive therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that he had recently developed.

    Since that time, I have maintained a close working relationship with both Drs. O'Connor and Aardema, providing case reports for their second IBA clinician’s manual as well as attending the annual Quebec Obsessive Compulsive Foundation conference as a Q and A panelist.

    In 2017, I participated in the first IBA training conference that took place in Montreal. Presently, the group is exploring ways to disseminate IBA to therapists in the US, Canada and Europe.

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© 2022 Robert Safion, LMHC

Treatment of Obsessional Spectrum Anxiety

6 Harris Street, Newburyport, MA 01950