As your therapist, my commitment is to strengthening and supporting the part of you that wants to grow and change. I will anticipate your resistance to change because I know that habitual patterns can be very comfortable, even when they are painful and self-destructive. Together we will seek to understand, rather than judge, your unhealthy patterns and help you to develop resources for coping more effectively.
The first step in the therapy process is to develop a shared understanding of the problematic issues precipitating your decision to seek treatment. I will pull from a variety of therapeutic traditions in order to clarify your issues, their genesis and the current day forces that keep your habitual patterns in place. The cognitive behavioral tradition is very helpful around highlighting the dysfunctional beliefs and schemas (belief systems) that underlie and fuel your symptoms. I will assist you in framing and articulating these deeply held beliefs. Bringing distorted schemas into consciousness is beneficial because it broadens self-awareness and self-understanding. You then have the opportunity to challenge the negative beliefs by enacting new, more self-validating behaviors. I am influenced by the "third-wave" of cognitive behavioral theory, which incorporates principles of mindfulness into treatment. Mindfulness teaches awareness without judgment, an attitude that most of us are sorely in need of. This attitude allows you to witness your dysfunctional beliefs and behaviors without condemning yourself, which opens a pathway for gradual change.
A word about the role of the past in therapy. In many cases understanding childhood issues is a helpful, if not indispensable, aspect of the therapeutic process. The goal here is not to blame your parents for your current day unhappiness, which is a common misconception of psychodynamic therapy. Rather, the goal is to reawaken the child-self, which is often lurking beneath the most sophisticated and well tailored among us. Learning to validate your child-self, and by this I mean the level of experience that is defined by feelings rather than by defenses, allows for an enlarged experience of Self. There is not as much need to put energy into defending the Self, or your image, and instead there is more pleasure and meaning in merely Being your Self.
