After graduating from Purdue University in 1972, he has been active in both community mental health, the private practice of psychology, and teaching, coaching and writing for over 40 years. He is is a California licensed psychologist (Lic Number PSY6670), trained marriage therapist, coach, anger management expert, and author. He has worked with hundreds of couples and individuals in his clinical practice and has taught over 1000 anger management classes in southern California since 2002. With a partner, he had co-authored several widely-used books on anger management based on a model of anger management which is now taught to hundreds of other professionals across the country.
Dr Fiore began specializing in couples and marriage counseling in1992 by completing a 9-month certification program in sex therapy at UCLA. Since then, he has received specialized and/or certified training with the Gottman Institute in Seattle, Washington, Dr. Brent Atkinson (The Couples Clinic), The Couples Institute (Drs. Ellyn and Peter Pearson), PACT Institute (Dr. Stan Tatkin- Level 1), Diane Poole Heller, Ph.D. AMP4 Attachment Mastery Program, and specialized training in discernment counseling as developed by Dr. Willliam Doherty at the Marriage Specialist Institute in Minnesota.
My Therapeutic Approach
With some couples, I start by first assessing if a couple is ready or not for marriage counseling by using a process called discernment counseling. This works best for couples that are on the brink of divorce but haven’t decided yet. Ultimately, the goal is not to solve the marriage problems, but instead to see if the problems are solvable. Discernment Counseling is that process that will help you decide.
For couples who have decided previously to work on their marriage or relationship, or couples who ultimately decide to do so through discernment counseling, we start by exploring what it is that each partner would like to achieve from marriage therapy. For most couples the goal is to have a secure functioning relationship wherein each has the other’s back, there is mutual trust and support, there is emotional closeness, and there is a built in process to handle conflicts and disagreements.
We believe in teaching couples relationship skills that research has shown to separate successful couples from others.
What we DON’T do is spend hours in therapy sessions re-hashing fights or conflicts you may have had during the week. Fact is, all couples have conflicts around certain issues that never seem to go away. The key to success is for partners to learn how to successfully deal with each other around those issues. For issues that are more solvable, we teach specific skills to improve things like parenting skills, money managing skills, assertive communication skills, empathy skills, or anger management skills.
While much therapeutic change can occur in the sessions themselves, we often assign “homework” between sessions because the learning of new skills takes practice. We realize you are busy, so we try to assign therapeutic homework that will realistically fit into your schedule, yet will be beneficial to your relationship.