A Bit About Therapy

Psychotherapy is not one thing. However, many psychotherapies seek to support clients to make changes by developing a flexible relationship with their environment and a secure sense of self.

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My work with clients builds on an alliance with the client to develop and enhance what Donald Winnicott called the true self - that clear experience of feeling alive and real in one's body. Therefore, psychotherapy is not about fixing anything or dwelling on the past. Rather, it focuses on making clients aware of habits and emotional patterns that served them in some way in the past but that may not be serving them as well in the present.

 

This process happens in various ways, especially by being in close relationship with the therapist and by building on the client's independent capacity to track emotions and behaviors and then have the choice how they want to response to situations in their life. This usually involves building the capacity to put difficult memories and feelings into words and make meaning of them rather than avoid them or be afraid of them. As these capacities grow, creativity and the feeling of being real and alive become stronger and stronger. In cases where there is trauma in a client's past, aliveness is further enhanced with somatic, body-based techniques that support regulation of the nervous system and the release of old behavioral and emotional patterns, especially shame, anxiety, anger, and depression.

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The progression and length of therapy depends on the client's circumstances and goals. This is something that should be discussed openly at the beginning of therapy and revisited regularly along the way.