How Therapy Helps
What can a trained therapist offer that you can’t get from talking to a trusted friend or family member?
First of all, I offer a safe space in which you can be yourself. All too often, no matter how much someone might love us, there are topics that you just can't share with a friend or family member. Either you’re afraid it could be hurtful, or you don't know how the information would change your relationship. I provide an opportunity for you to speak without fear of judgment, shame or repercussions.
Second, I offer expertise about emotional healing. I provide the insight into human experience that gives you a way to normalize what you're going through as well as find your way out of it. And I provide a structure for getting conscious about emotional patterns that can either hold a person back or set someone free to experience life more fully.
Third, I offer a healing relationship. I believe that transformation is a whole mind-body experience that takes place in your relationship with others. New developments in psychoanalysis have shown that our feelings are felt in relation to others. The opportunity of psychotherapy is the opportunity to feel things in the presence of another person and look at how difficult feelings such as grief, anger, sadness, or fear are perpetuated in the way one relates to others, and then to look at how those feelings can be released. To be seen as competent, worthy, fun-to-be-with, or any other quality you want to nurture in yourself, this quality must be nurtured within a relationship. When an experienced, compassionate therapist provides you with the feedback about how you present in the world, you get empowered to be your very best self. This is not just a coaching or ra-ra session. This is about delving into how your map of the world got written, mourning the loss that represents, and then stepping into bigger and bigger experiences of yourself. I have done this work myself and I have helped hundreds of clients do the same.
People experience many different types of results from psychotherapy. Among these are: increased satisfaction in intimate relationships; better control over debt, finances and earning-potential; richer social lives; moving on from delayed grief and morning; freedom from compulsive use of drugs, alcohol or sex.
What is the goal of psychotherapy? To live life authentically in relationship to others, unsurprised by life’s upsets, experiencing feelings not with resistance but acceptance.