The following is an over-simplified statement about psychotherapy and my philosophy of treatment. It does, however, provide you with a sense of what psychotherapy is as well as my treatment philosophy.
Psychotherapy is essentially a liberation process. It can free one from painful symptoms like anxiety and depression and from a variety of self-defeating behaviors. It can free one from obstacles that keep one from achieving life goals and free one from habitual, unsatisfying ways of relating to others. It can free couples who feel stuck in ways of relating that cause frustration, discontent and unhappiness. It can also free one from a limiting past and open one up to a promising future.
Psychotherapy facilitates these freedoms because it occurs within the context of a very special, professional relationship with a trained and experienced clinician. Psychotherapy is not simply chatting about what occurred during the past week. It is a focused process with clear goals selected and developed by the client in consultation with the psychotherapist. Therefore, psychotherapy is intended to satisfy the client’s needs and goals and not those of the psychotherapist or anyone else. The process focuses on the core problems with which individuals struggle each day and to remove the obstacles on the client’s life journey which prevent them from getting to wherever they want to go.
Counseling and psychotherapy are terms often used interchangeably but the two are distinct entities. Counseling is about advisement — giving advice. The client sees the counselor, explains the problem and the counselor tells the client what to do to resolve the problem. There are all kinds of counselors: career, school, financial, legal, etc. Part of what brings someone to seek psychotherapy is that they have become lost in all the advice they have been given and cannot sort out whose or what advice to heed.
Psychotherapy, on the other hand, is not about advisement. In psychotherapy, the therapist tries to create a safe, non-judgmental environment in which the client feels free to explore the past and present obstacles and patterns of behavior that stand in the way of their getting to where they want to go and finding the solutions within themselves that will eliminate those obstacles. In psychotherapy, the client, through reflection and self-exploration, discover the solutions to their life difficulties. Psychotherapy accepts that the answers to the client’s problems exist within the client and not in the psychotherapist.
Clinical experience teaches that the patterns of feeling, perception, and behavior that lead to many of life’s problems are not necessarily chosen, established or maintained at a conscious level. Clearly, most of us do not consciously choose or engage in behaviors that create pain and distress. But the habits we develop which often do develop outside of conscious awareness and reside in the unconscious, which can make them difficult to reach.
It is the existence of these unconscious processes, this out of awareness experience, that is often the key to understanding what psychotherapy is. For just as the problems that individuals experience are established outside conscious awareness, the solution to these problems must reach into the unconscious. To bring about significant and lasting change requires delving into the unconscious and its contents for psychotherapy to work its magic. The difference between intellectual learning and the personal insight that emerges in psychotherapy from such deep exploration is the great gift and basis upon which the process rests.
Clinical experience teaches that most of us resist, with the greatest determination, the most elemental knowledge of ourselves. Usually, it is only when we are in a state of great pain (anxiety or depression) or confusion that we are willing to risk exploring some of our most cherished ideas about what we ourselves and how the painful life situations that we experience emerge. An encounter with the essential truth about oneself can only occur within a safe and accepting environment. This genuine self-exploration can be painful and scary, causing many to prefer to live pain and disappointment rather than to go through the difficult process of getting to truly know oneself, giving up older comfortable, although painful or self-limiting, ways of being.
My approach to psychotherapy entails a deep valuing of human experience in all its complexity. I view each client as an individual with her or his own unique pattern of perceiving and relating to the world. This pattern of relating to the world was developed over the course of one’s life to assist that individual in survival and in adapting to the world they encountered, initially their family of origin and then in the larger outside world. All too often, unfortunately, the tools we learned and employ in earlier stages of our lives to adapt and survive may lose their effectiveness or may turn out to be dysfunctional. Indeed, it is often the skills we learned and used in the past to survive and adapt to life circumstances that create the psychological symptoms (e.g., depression, anxiety, fears and relationship difficulties) we experience today. The main goal of psychotherapy is to learn new, more effective, more productive, meaningful, fulfilling and symptom-free ways of perceiving and relating to the world.
My approach to psychotherapy is also relational. Almost all mental and emotional distress and problems occur in the context of human relationships. Clinical research and experience indicate that the solution to these problems is also relational. This means that the power of psychotherapy to be of benefit to the client resides in the professional relationship that emerges between the client and the psychotherapist. Indeed, the research on the power of psychotherapy to benefit a client relies on the relationship between the psychotherapist and the patient. The research further indicates that the characteristics of the relationship between the psychotherapist and the client that leads to beneficial changes include a sense on the part of the client that they are safe, understood and accepted by the psychotherapist. Feeling safe, understood and accepted permits the client to be open and honest within the context of the relationship and to experience a sense of empathy. Once understanding, trust, openness, honesty and empathy are achieved in the therapeutic relationship, then clients develop the strength and courage to make the changes that free them from their painful symptoms, distress and behaviors that lead them to seek help via psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is, therefore, a process of eliminating self-doubt, fear and emotional turmoil while promoting self-knowledge, self-confidence, personal growth and fulfillment.
Although many of the problems from which clients in psychotherapy suffer may have their roots in the distant past, the approach to psychotherapy I employ focuses primarily on the present and the problems manifest in the client’s current life. I understand that we cannot undo the past, but we can change the way we perceive and approach the present. It is in the present that psychotherapy is most effective.
Most of the clients with whom I work complete the therapeutic process within six months to one year. Most clients begin to see symptom relief within five to eight sessions and see significant changes in their lives within 20 to 30 sessions. Because every client is different, it is not possible to be definitive about the timing of the benefits experienced by the client. Some clients, after benefitting from altering old ways of perceiving and reacting to the world, choose to continue with psychotherapy in order to see how far they can go on the journey to self-fulfillment. This is a choice made by the client in conjunction with the psychotherapist. This choice is not for every client, and I respect the client’s wishes to terminate treatment.
I view each client as an individual with her or his own unique pattern of perceiving and relating to the world. This pattern of relating to the world was developed over the course of one’s life to assist that individual in survival and in adapting to the world they encountered, initially their family of origin and then in the larger outside world. All too often, unfortunately, the tools we learned and employ in earlier stages of our lives to survive may lose their effectiveness or may turn out to be dysfunctional. Indeed, it is often the skills we learned and used in the past to adapt and survive that may create symptoms (e.g., anxiety, fears depression, and relationship difficulties) that we experience today. The main goal of psychotherapy is to learn new, more effective, more productive, meaningful, fulfilling and symptom-free ways of perceiving and relating to the world.