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913 San Ramon Valley Blvd., Suite 280
Danville, CA  94526
925-838-2558 ext 2
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Marc Berke, Ph.D., LMFT
Collaborative Coach and Child Specialist

I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with nearly 30 years experience. I provide collaborative coaching and mediation services as well as therapy to individuals, couples, families, adolescents and their parents. My aim is to assist clients to find healthy solutions to individual, marital, and family issues. I have a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology from John F. Kennedy University, a Doctorate Degree in Clinical Psychology from Saybrook Institute (formerly Humanistic Psychology Institute), and post graduate training in child custody evaluation, mediation, and the fundamentals and principles of collaborative divorce. As a divorce coach I find that couples divorcing often believe that intractable problems can only be solved by divorce. Many clients believe that getting a divorce will allow the family to move into a better place. Divorce can be a step toward resolution but not necessarily a resolution. A positive transition through the difficult process of divorce can lay the foundation for better and more satisfying relationships in the future. In my experience as a coach I find that the present predicts the future. Couples often go through the divorce process with the same unresolved issues they have during the marriage and often worse. If their style of communication does not change, these issues will continue not only during the divorce process, but long into the future. Therefore the need to improve the quality of communication between the couple is critical and especially if children are involved. In fact, studies have shown that families where parents are not divorced but live with high conflict have more child adjustment problems than the divorced families with less conflict. Thus, the same factors that led to the divorce likely have had a negative impact on children by the time the divorce actually occurs. It is for these reasons I believe the value of improving communication in order to craft agreements that take into account the best interests of the whole family. Collaborative divorce aids in restructuring the nuclear family. The aim is to create a family that functions better than the previous family structure. Collaboration is consensus building that is based on a solution that works for everyone, a win/win. The collaborative process holds much promise for a successful outcome to a difficult life transition.