Guiding Principles

If you’re still curious what therapy feels like, the below guiding principles might give you a flavor for my approach.

Change occurs gradually.

Oftentimes we’re brought to therapy to find quick relief from a painful crisis. Sometimes these crises are easily resolved. More often, however, they are driven by dynamics that took form over many years, and resolving them will require some time. A key to therapy is understanding, and entitling oneself, to a learning curve that respects that lasting change takes time.

We are all ambivalent about change.

In the course of learning and growing in therapy we are apt to encounter resistance. Part of us wants to change, but another part of us doesn’t want to change. (For example, part of us may want to stop drinking, but part of us really doesn’t!) Our habits, however sometimes dysfunctional, feel safer because they are familiar. That side of us that doesn’t want to change is real, and merits our attention.

Engagement is critical.

If effective therapy takes time and we are likely to encounter resistance, we want to ensure that we are adequately invested from the outset. I think it important to start, then, with a clear awareness of what’s driving you to seek therapy – both the pains and opportunities. I also think it important to find benefit early and regularly in order to maintain your motivation. I aim to help us keep a pulse on your level of engagement lest you lose heart and withdraw.

Therapy is unlike medical procedures.

There’s no transplant for mood or motivation. In contrast to medical procedures, then, I think therapy is wisely regarded as an expedition, and the role of the therapist as a guide. Or a coach. Or a consultant. Or a midwife. Whatever the analogy, you’ll make better progress if you can regard me as a partner rather than the surgeon or magician.

There are many paths up the mountain.

I am suspicious of experts touting a miracle method. I espouse eclecticism - drawing from multiple treatment methods - and individualization - tailoring treatment to match the individual needs, preferences, and capabilities of each client. I might regard our engagement variably as about naming and processing your experience, fostering discovery about key aspects of your personality, coaching certain skills in cognitive or affective processing, or devising strategies to solve a problem. My commitment is always to your growth and development. Our shared task is in identifying and sticking with those strategies that are helping you move forward.

Our relationship matters.

Most all of my clients speak to challenges they experience in their relationships. As it turns out, the tendency we have about how to relate to another is the same tendency you might exhibit in relating to me. Examining our dynamic is difficult (and most well-suited once our relationship is more mature) but is an incredibly rich source of learning.

Your relationship with your mother matters, too.

Psychoanalytic therapies are easily parodied. I’m not a Freudian, and I don’t smoke cigars, but your early relationship with your caregiver matters (as do the home environment you grew up in and any critical events you experienced), and probably bear on your problem in some fashion. How so will depend on your history, but I think it worth surveying this part of your life.

Improvement is measured by new behavior.

The result of therapy isn’t a warm and fuzzy feeling (though I hope you experience an inspiration of awe at a moving discovery at least a few times in the course of our experience). Rather, I would want to see you able to demonstrate new learning through new behaviors: advocating more directly for yourself, exhibiting tenderness with your partner, or tolerating disappointment and frustration constructively. New behaviors are the tangible dividend of your investment in therapy.