My Psychotherapy Philosophy

There's a lot of ways of thinking about how to go about therapy. Here are some of mine:

1. It's very important that you feel a connection with your therapist. One of the most significant and enduring findings about therapy is that it works best when you develop a strong relationship with your therapist. If it seems like you and your therapist "click" and they understand you, this is a great sign as it suggests you might be more likely to feel comfortable opening up and sharing. If you feel uncomfortable with your therapist, it would be recommended that you either talk about it with them to understand it (to feel more comfortable) or consider looking for someone you feel more comfortable.

2. Understanding yourself and making meaning of what is bothering you will help you to understand yourself and manage those bothers in the future. While it is important and paramount that you experience a reduction in your distress, I believe that the more we understand ourselves and our experience, the more we can lead happier, fuller, and richer lives, not just while therapy is happening but long after you have stopped. 

3. While making meaning of and understanding yourself and your symptoms can be important, it is also important that you make changes in your life. Self-knowledge is a great thing that often leads us to make changes on our own. However, if we don't use the insights we have about ourselves and our experience to make changes in our lives, we can sometimes stay stuck in our rut. This might look like me asking you to think about something before our next session, to process your emotions in a different way, or to try out a new behavior. 

4. What happens in therapy can be almost as important as what happens outside of therapy. People often come into therapy and replicate some of their own individual and interpersonal dynamics. For example, a client may struggle with finding it difficult to open up to others in their personal, familial, or romantic relationships. It is all but certain that pattern would continue in therapy. The great thing about therapy is that it allows the client and therapist to talk about what is happening in the moment in a way that a client might not do with those in their life outside of therapy. Therapists are trained to notice these replications and discuss them in a way that hopefully benefit clients. As a client in this situation likely becomes more comfortable doing this in session, they will also be more likely to do this outside of session. 

6. Related to the last point, It is important that you experience therapy. Becoming emotionally engaged in therapeutic work is much more beneficial than "just talking." When therapy is a cerebral exercise that stays too close to the surface, it hinders us because we don't allow ourselves to be changed on a deeper level by the therapy process. 

7. Much of your progress depends on how much work you put in the therapy process. No one would argue that change is easy. It can be an inherently difficult, slow process. To help this be easier, you can help by pushing yourself to really reflect on your experiences in and outside of therapy and consider making changes to your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. For those interested, homework/exercises/behavioral experiments outside of session can be co-created between us each session to maximize our work. I will not force you to do these thing as some people do not come to therapy for homework, but it is important that you consider how our work is leading you to make practical changes in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors outside of our work.

Theoretical Orientation

Theoretical orientation is the term used to describe the approach a therapist takes in understanding what is going on with a client and what to do about it. Psychotherapy research has repeatedly demonstrated that most major theoretical orientations (cognitive behavioral, psychoanalytic, person-centered, humanistic) have similar therapy outcomes when compared to each other (with a slight edge towards cognitive behavioral therapies). Some approaches have been much better than others in demonstrating the efficacy of their work while others do not prioritize research as much, feeling like therapy is too complex of a process to quantify. Click here for a list of theoretical orientations and their explanations.

In terms of technical approach, I come from a relational psychoanalytic perspective. This perspective believes that: 1) emotions, and the expression of emotions, are important , 2) paying attention to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that we avoid can help us understand the conflict that we have about them, 3) we have patterns that we repeat in our minds and our relationships with others that need to be understood to make changes in our life, 4) what has happened to us in our past significantly affects our present and understanding how they do relate will help us in the present, 5) understanding our relationships with others helps us to understand ourselves more, 6) the therapy relationship helps to make changes and provides a place for our interpersonal patterns to play out so they can be examined, and 7) things like dreams, day dreams, wishes, and fantasies offer insight into our intrapsychic world. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is effective as both a once-a-week treatment as well as a multiple sessions per week endeavor. Having sessions more than once a week allows for a deeper experience that has shown to help people not only experience less distress but also to change long-standing, entrenched personality traits and patterns. There is a prevailing belief that 'Freud is dead" and that psychodynamic therapy does not work. This simply isn't true as there are many studies showing its effectiveness. In addition to working psychoanalytically, I am also versed in cognitive behavioral therapy, person centered therapy, emotion-focused therapy, and solution-focused therapy.

Another approach that I am trained in is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a treatment that is known for addressing both singular and complex trauma. As described by the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA), “EMDR is a structured therapy that encourages the patient to focus briefly on the trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories.” For more information about the approach, there is a good overview on EMDRIA’s website.