MY UNIQUE SIGNATURE IN APPROACHING MY CLIENTS
In my practice, I work hard to provide quality care with grace and professionalism. I believe this begins by creating a sense of warmth, compassion, and genuine curiosity. When you initially come in, I will ask you to tell me your story and what led you to seek help at this time in your life. I will ask you to describe what you hope therapy can give you to ensure the direction taken is tailored to what is most useful for you. I believe this discussion is the crux of what is to follow in the course of therapy.
In the beginning and throughout the process, I emphasize a few basic ideas about therapy that I believe are always important to keep in mind: 1) Significant change requires time and effort. The process goes beyond the intellectual and must involve an experience of getting in touch with your emotions. 2) Effective psychotherapy is mental exercise. When getting in touch with feelings we have not allowed ourselves to feel in a long while it can feel like you are working out a new set of muscles. 3) Let your intuition be your guide. I believe your intuition will guide you to where you need to do the work, when you need to do it and when you are ready to do it. I start each session by stating “start wherever you would like to”. 4) Trust your inner guide and be patient with your process. Trust your psyche’s pace. It will bring up things to your consciousness when it is ready to be shared and addressed. Ultimately, I believe that you’ve got what’s inside you to understand yourself. You just need help pulling it out. I’ll help you find it, and help you develop the tools you’ll need to continue the work throughout your personal process of finding resolution for your problems.
Ultimately, I want to understand what you are experiencing and what you hope to work through. And, I want you to feel that I get it. In my practice, I consider 3 key elements as the main pillars to keeping up a positive and vital approach; my presence and well-being, the physical surroundings of my office space, and an overarching hope I hold in my mind for each and every client I serve.
PRESENCE - CREATING A SUPPORTIVE PARTNERSHIP
I believe presence is everything when wanting to create a supportive partnership with my clients. To create that kind of a relationship, I actively engage in your therapy process when sitting directly across from you by remaining; curious, gently inquisitive, warm, patient, centered, calm, empathic, open, encouraging, and thoughtful. I will not hesitate to ask questions and I do not want you to hold back either.
Our partnership is about sharing a joint space where I encourage you to explore, dig deep and eventually come to answers of your own that make sense and guide you in the direction of healing within. Hopefully, this creates a space of freedom for you whereby you feel easily and naturally compelled to say whatever needs to be said in the manner that feels right. I want there to a sense that you can let your guard down without fear of judgment of any kind.
PHYSICAL SURROUNDINGS
The physical presentation of the space in my practice is intended to invite a feeling of comfort, tranquility, safety, and security. I like to imagine my office as a place you enter into while stepping temporarily out from the world outside as you know and experience it. You press the pause button for a brief 50 minutes and enter into a place where you put all of your thoughts, feelings and experiences out onto the table and sit with them openly, honestly and courageously knowing all the while that no one in your life knows exactly what you are talking about and considering for yourself.
To support your process, I place artwork throughout the room that invites and sets the tone for deeper pondering and reflection of yourself and your process. In other instances, consider the artwork as simply a mark of beauty. Surrounding yourself with beauty is one very good way of self-care while you bravely take the steps to revisit old painful memories and feelings that are getting explored and worked through in the therapeutic space. Either way you look at it; the creation of a beautiful therapeutic space is my way of creating a safe place for careful exploration, thoughtful processing, quiet reflection, and gentle pondering to occur.
DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY
MY APPROACH TO MY CLIENT’S PRESENTING PROBLEM
Beyond my basic approach, my work as a psychotherapist falls within the scope of depth psychology. Depth psychology values the conscious and unconscious mind and is particularly concerned with how well the two are or are not integrated in one’s mind. From this perspective, my belief is that symptoms in mental health present themselves when there is a lack of balance in our mind. We may have pushed aside certain memories or experiences for example and tried to forget them. But, as I explain often to my clients, the mind nor the body ever really forgets about it. Actually, when ignored or not dealt with it festers inside and can turn into depression or anxiety for example. When it arises, it may suddenly feel like it came randomly on its own. Yet, as the pieces of the puzzle are slowly taken apart in therapy, the source of how and where it started from begins to show itself more clearly. The goal then becomes to bring the conscious and unconscious mind into balance in order to help a person develop a restored and more balanced mind. In general, this strengthens our sense of self, and our relationship within ourselves and important others in our lives.
Specific treatment modalities
Contained within the depth psychological framework, I draw from more specific treatment modalities; Mentalization Based Treatment (MBT), Psycho-drama, and Jungian psychology. Each of these 3 modalities ultimately help my clients to look further inside of themselves when they are trying to understand something they have struggled to figure out on their own. They also help my clients consider ways to relate with others that is more satisfying and less distressing.
MBT, developed by Peter Fonagy, PhD, and Anthony Bateman, PhD, was originally created to treat borderline personality disorder and is intended to help a people be able to distinctly tease apart feelings and thoughts between themselves versus others around them. When a sense of self is not as sound this becomes confusing and relationships are stressful and perhaps even unsuccessful. In this process, I do not provide a prescribed explanation as to what you need to do and how to change it. Instead, I engage in “active questioning” meaning together we explore your set of circumstances as you learn to reflect on the difficult areas in your life where it is hard to separate apart your experience vs the other’s. As we come to sit together in a more calm, quiet, and reflective space remaining more curious and less upset about what you struggle with, the idea is that new considerations come to mind that slowly start to present themselves naturally in time. As a result, new directions begin to effect change for the better improving your relationship with yourself and others.
Psycho-drama, developed by Jay Moreno, helps people to gain insight into the behavior of others with whom they have struggled to get along with and relate well to. When “psycho-dramatizing” a certain scene with an individual who has been difficult to deal with, the person learns to develop a sense of empathy for that person. When we learn to empathize in our most challenging relational dynamics, we ultimately feel freer because we do not get personally hurt by the other’s actions. The term used in psycho-drama is referred as “role reversal”. This is a process where you basically learn to get inside the shoes of the other person. While it may sound “easy”, this process can be emotional and challenging particularly when we feel blocked by our emotional reactions to certain others in our life who make it hard to relate comfortably with. While psycho-drama is practiced in a group setting, I currently use pieces of this modality within individual sessions.
Jungian psychology, created by Carl G. Jung, also known as Analytical Psychology, focuses on restoring balance between the conscious and unconscious mind. While there are many aspects to Jungian psychology, I primarily rely upon the use of dream work. When clients have recurring dreams or a dream that stands out as distressing, upsetting, or confusing, we work collaboratively together to draw out a meaning and purpose of the dream that helps to put it into the context of your life. I will ask you to free associate to the images that stand out and in time connections hopefully are made. This experience can be settling, eye opening and also emotional. Because dream work can be so intimate, I usually do not engage in dream work until our relationship has been well established. Feeling safe and connected makes a difference and is more beneficial.
Please keep in mind these are not the only modalities I use in therapy. There may be other more skilled based interventions as well. These 3 I described gives you an idea of where I work best with my clients. This is certainly something we can talk more about in depth in an initial consultation.