The Therapy Decision

Deciding to be in therapy takes courage.  Therapy is a process of looking deeply at oneself and taking the risk to change the things that are not working in one’s life.  If you are considering therapy for the first time or looking for an avenue to continue your inner work at a deeper level, you have already made a big step in the next phase of your journey just in your desire for change.  I wish you well whatever you decide is next for you in your healing process.

The Therapy Process

There are many different reasons that people decide to engage in therapy.  We all have things that we need help with at times.  Feelings of depression; fear talking with people or in social situations; relationship difficulties; challenges with people at work; struggle with addictions to substances, food, people; and fear and difficulty with sexual intimacy are some examples of problems we all encounter at some point in our life.  Therapy can help with these issues on many different levels.  I tend to break down therapy into three levels as a way to think and talk about the process which sometimes is hard to put into words.

The first level of therapy, as I think about it, is working on the immediate concern that is currently present in your life.  The therapy work is about finding solutions to manage the problem at hand and create some immediate change in the situation.  This is usually the first step in the therapy process.

The second level of therapy is to look a little deeper at the current situation.  Where else has this problem shown up in your life?  What are the underlying feelings, beliefs, concepts that may be contributing to the current situation?  Therapy can help identify and ‘clean out’ these deeper issues that need healing.  

Working on these two levels at the same time is often an effective way to create real change and healing that lasts.  When you address the situation at the deeper level, the situation is less likely to be recreated over and over again in life. 

The third level of therapy is an even deeper level of healing that begins when we start to look at the questions of: What is my larger purpose here? What is my life all about?  Who am I really?  These questions are a natural part of the transformation process.  It takes courage to explore these questions and experience the feelings that come with this process. Some people talk about this type of inner work as having the feeling of the “soul” moving and evolving.  This level of work is often a natural result of going deeply into the first two levels of therapy.

Your therapy

Regardless of where you are in your process of self-exploration, you get to choose what kind of personal work you need at this time.  We can work on any of the levels you need at any point in your therapy process.  The therapy becomes a process that you and I enter into together to find different ways to help you heal and change as you desire.  It is a dynamic process that will continue to evolve and unfold as you are changing and transforming.