Most counseling and psychotherapy services operate at the level of trying to help you better manage your life, and that is of course often very important. This often looks like the therapist helping you think about an issue in a different way, finding coping strategies, and making use of problem-solving type interventions. Some believe that just by lending a kind and sympathetic ear, you get better. In some instances, this is exactly what is needed.
As useful and important as these ways of working can be and often are, they typically amount to psychological Band-Aids. Band-Aids can be crucial as they can at least temporarily stop bleeding, but by nature they fall short of healing inner wounds. While adopting the pace that works best for you, I aim to address the root causes of your psychological pain while simultaneously working towards more immediate symptom relief.
It was Frida Fromm-Reichmann who said that “the patient is in need of an experience, not an explanation,” and that is the spirit in which I practice. Once therapy takes on an experiential component, making sense of the experience and putting it into perspective is vital, but explanations without new experiences tend to do little to create deep and lasting change.
