Service
Psychotherapy
Talk therapy for individuals, couples, families, and young adults, shaped around what you actually need rather than a fixed protocol.
A Safe Place
Resolving difficulties in a secure place. In today's world, stress, sadness, and overwhelming feelings are increasingly common. A person can search for answers but not quite know where to turn. Often friends and family mean well but do not offer suggestions that make things better.
A therapist provides a confidential space to talk about anything, and brings professional training and experience to help you make important changes in your life. Having a place to talk safely and openly can be the first step.
New Understanding
Psychotherapy can help by giving you better insight into yourself and into how your mind works. It can help you understand how problems have developed, and it offers strategies for change and growth. The main approaches to therapy either help you think psychologically or change how you think and behave. I find both are important.
Psychotherapy is helpful not only in resolving a problem, but in raising the quality of a person's life. It can help with many issues, including depression and sadness, the winter blues, stress and anxiety, trauma and PTSD, relationship difficulties, bad habits, weight management, smoking cessation, and pain management.
Generative Work
Psychotherapy is not only for solving problems or easing symptoms. It is also effective for life improvement, reaching your potential, and finding more meaning in life. The situations of daily routine can hold a person back from their goals.
Creative blocks, such as performance anxiety, can get in the way of developing abilities and talents. Increasing a state of openness can help with work, sports, and other pursuits. Often, when people resolve the obvious problems in life, they are left with deeper questions of meaning that deserve attention too.
What is psychotherapy?
Here is how the American Psychiatric Association describes it.
Problems helped by psychotherapy include difficulties coping with daily life, the impact of trauma, medical illness, or loss such as the death of a loved one, and specific mental disorders like depression or anxiety. There are several different types of psychotherapy, and some may work better with certain problems or issues. Psychotherapy may be used on its own or in combination with medication or other therapies.
Therapy sessions
Therapy may be individual, family, couple, or group, and can help both children and adults. Sessions are typically held once a week, for about 30 to 50 minutes. Both patient and therapist are actively involved, and the trust between them is essential to the work. Psychotherapy can be short term, dealing with immediate issues, or longer term, dealing with longstanding and complex ones. The goals and the schedule are planned together. Confidentiality is a basic requirement, and although patients share personal feelings and thoughts, intimate physical contact with a therapist is never appropriate, acceptable, or useful.
Psychotherapy and medication
Psychotherapy is often combined with medication. In some cases medication is clearly useful; in others, therapy is the better option; for many people the combination works best. Healthy habits, good nutrition, regular exercise, and adequate sleep all support recovery.
Does psychotherapy work?
Research shows that most people who receive psychotherapy experience relief and function better in their lives. About 75 percent of people who enter psychotherapy show some benefit. Psychotherapy has been shown to improve emotions and behaviors and to be linked with positive changes in the brain and body, including fewer sick days, less disability, fewer medical problems, and increased work satisfaction.
Brain-imaging techniques have let researchers see changes in the brain after a person undergoes psychotherapy. Numerous studies have identified brain changes in people with mental illness, including depression, panic disorder, and PTSD, as a result of psychotherapy, and in most cases those changes were similar to the changes seen from medication.
Getting the most from therapy
To get the most out of psychotherapy, approach it as a collaborative effort: be open and honest, and follow your agreed-upon plan for treatment. Follow through on any assignments between sessions, such as writing in a journal or practicing what you have talked about.
If any of this resonates, the first step is simply a conversation about what you are looking for.
I welcome individuals, couples, families, and young adults. Reach out and we can find a time to talk.