Individual Therapy

Therapy takes place in the context of a relationship between the therapist and client.  I am a warm and engaging person and I like to be direct and give feedback, but I do this always in a way that never hurts you but empowers you.

I will need to get to know you, so the more open you can be, the better the therapy will go.

I will help you become more aware of yourself by helping you identify the unconscious patterns that are the sources of your distress.

I will teach you how to observe these limiting and detrimental patterns as they pop up in you life so that you can learn to make better choices. The ability to observe yourself is the single most powerful tool for personal change.

When people are hurt, they repress their painful emotions. However, it is these repressed emotions and feelings that block progress. I will help you recognize your emotions and help you understand how working them out is the key to personal growth. 

I will help you discover how you distort your perceptions of yourself and others in your thinking. Everyone does this to some extent.  Examples are “No one likes me” and “I’m a failure”. We get use to thoughts like this and never exam them. They are actually emotionally based thoughts and beliefs.

At times it may be useful to look at how certain events and conditions in your history influence the present.  This doesn’t mean years of analytic therapy because there are direct ways to get into the past, but seeing on an emotional level how you perceive and react in certain ways in the present reflects experiences in the past.

It is important to know that therapy is not an intellectual process. Knowing that you were abused as a child, for example, does not in itself change anything, although it does provide a direction. Working it through on an emotional level leads to substantial inner change that is empowering and lasting.

The above gives you an idea of a great deal of what will take place in therapy, but obviously not all. If you have questions, please feel free to call me.