What is Therapy?
If you are reading this, you might be wondering if therapy is for you. While I cannot answer that question for you, learning more about therapy might help you find your own answer. So, that is my goal for today: to give you information so that you can make the best choice for yourself.
Let’s Define Some Terms
What exactly is therapy anyway? While there are many forms of therapy; including antibiotic therapy, physical rehabilitation therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, psychotherapy, and many more; psychotherapy is what we are going to focus on here. Let’s take a look at Oxford Languages to see how they define psychotherapy. They state that psychotherapy is “the treatment of mental disorder by psychological rather than medical means.” That might sound more than a little scary, so let's break it down.
What that really means is this: instead of using medications, psychotherapy relies on the relationship between the therapist and client to bring about impactful change. Psychotherapy is what we are referring to when we think of talking with a therapist about our problems, but it is much more than just that. Psychotherapy is a form of treatment that is focused on a person’s mental and emotional health. Just as you can see many different types of medical doctors depending on what your needs are, psychotherapy can take many forms as well. Although the definition above limits psychotherapy to the treatment of mental disorders, it can be used much more broadly than that.
What Type of Therapy Do I Offer?
If you have experienced an injury that required physical therapy, you likely were prescribed to meet with a physical therapist for a set length of time. During your visits your physical therapist worked with you, giving you specific exercises to complete during the visit and at home that would help restore your body back to health. Therapy works in a similar manner; through regular visits, you address the areas of your life that you would like to see change.
The clients that come to see me are mostly focused on the areas of anxiety and trauma. When they first start therapy it is usually because life has become overwhelming. They feel stuck in all of the hard stuff they have been dealing with, and although they desperately want things to change, they are no longer sure if they really can. They feel far removed from who they are and wonder if they will be able to get back to the person they once were. They are tired. Tired of working so hard to make things better. Tired of life pushing them down as soon as they start to get back up. Tired of feeling anxious, overwhelmed, and constantly reminded of negative things.
My first task is to help them feel comfortable acknowledging what they are experiencing. No need to sugar-coat things here, and no need to deny how they really feel. From there we create a roadmap together of where we will journey in therapy. That map starts with learning tools that will help them manage their anxiety and moments of overwhelm. I incorporate Brainspotting to help bring relief from the big emotions that they have been experiencing (stay tuned to learn more about what exactly Brainspotting is).
Then, once they have their “sea legs,” so to speak, we take a deeper look at what is going on for them. I help them understand why they may be stuck in certain patterns, why certain things are so hard on them, and why they just can’t seem to get past where they are in life. With that understanding and their experiences of being seen and cared for in therapy, they begin to change their relationship with themselves. They start to extend kindness to themselves, even when they mess up, and things that used to overwhelm them start to become manageable.
Is Therapy One-Size-Fits-All?
My clients work with me anywhere from one month to 2 years. The length of their therapy varies depending on what their focus is. Clients who are with me for shorter-term therapy (1-3 months) are usually there to address symptoms they are experiencing that relate to one or two specific instances in their life. Once they have found the relief they need, their therapy journey is complete for now. Many of my clients, however, are with me for a longer amount of time. These clients are focused on patterns and beliefs in their life that relate back to their childhood experiences and the family they grew up with. Because these patterns and beliefs have roots that run deeper, it takes a bit more time to untangle things to allow healthier ways of thinking and doing life to grow.
No matter how long a client is with me, my focus is on helping them become comfortable again in their own skin - helping them feel like themselves, and not the shell of a person they had become. I strive to equip my clients with tools to help them manage difficult times in their lives because life keeps coming at us. I want to help them work through memories, beliefs, and patterns they had been stuck in so that they can face those things without becoming crippled by them. I seek to empower them to believe they are enough just the way they are and they have what it takes to get where they want to be.
What Next?
If this sounds like something you are looking for, I encourage you to fill out the contact form so that I can get in touch with you. And if you are looking for something else out of therapy, that is totally ok! Remember, there are many forms therapy can take, and what I have shared here is just one of them.
