"Psychotherapy is about how you think ... how you live with your emotions ... the perspectives you bring to relating with the people who matter to you ... what you aspire to in your life and how you may unwittingly make it harder for yourself to reach those goals" (James Bugental).
I will work hard to help you uncover and clear away the obstacles in your life that are keeping you from realizing your hopes and dreams ... those obstacles keeping you from having close connections with the people important to you.
What We'll Do
I will work hard to help you uncover and clear away the obstacles in your life that are keeping you from realizing your hopes and dreams ... those obstacles keeping you from having close connections with the people important to you.
What We'll Do
- We'll explore and examine your life - your years of collected experience - from different perspectives. We'll take a look at what shapes how you think, feel and act, and how you've come to interpret it.
- We'll uncover experiments for you to try - life experiments that may offer you fresh ways of shaping and interpreting your experience.
- We'll work on helping you learn and incoroporate techniques that will help you overcome specific roadblocks in your life.
- We'll explore and examine your new experiences.
- We'll repeat 1-5.
How We'll Do It
We'll work as together as detectives, asking questions about you and carefully observing your actions and reactions. As Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot just by watching."
In order to improve our chances of noticing previously undetected patterns and connections, I'll strive to help you identify and set aside your preconceived thoughts, at least temporarily. We'll work in the spirit of the Zen Buddhist concept of "beginner's mind." As the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki summed it up, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few."
I'll also work to help you experience and examine your experience in fresh, new ways. I'll work to help you gain heightened awareness of your layers of feelings and thoughts. They tend to feel very different, once they are experienced apart from old theories and assumptions. At times, they may feel very intense. You may find yourself feeling exhilarated, jubilant, terrified, overwhelmed, drained, sad ... any number of things. This happens to mountain climbers who take on the big peaks. This happens to adventurers and explorers.
Along the way, as your expert guide along with you on your own personal journey, I may notice some things that seem to get you hung up ... like painful memories and themes that keep surfacing in your life. .. like selective ways you may examine things ... like tapes you keep playing over and over inside your head ... like roles you get stuck in ... like ways you limit how you feel and think. I'll draw upon everything I've learned over the years about helping people build happier lives, but I'll be focusing on helping you tackle challenges that you decide to take on.
I may suggest working on or honing some helpful skills and techniques - particular skills to help you ovecome specific roadblocks. Some examples:
In order to improve our chances of noticing previously undetected patterns and connections, I'll strive to help you identify and set aside your preconceived thoughts, at least temporarily. We'll work in the spirit of the Zen Buddhist concept of "beginner's mind." As the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki summed it up, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few."
I'll also work to help you experience and examine your experience in fresh, new ways. I'll work to help you gain heightened awareness of your layers of feelings and thoughts. They tend to feel very different, once they are experienced apart from old theories and assumptions. At times, they may feel very intense. You may find yourself feeling exhilarated, jubilant, terrified, overwhelmed, drained, sad ... any number of things. This happens to mountain climbers who take on the big peaks. This happens to adventurers and explorers.
Along the way, as your expert guide along with you on your own personal journey, I may notice some things that seem to get you hung up ... like painful memories and themes that keep surfacing in your life. .. like selective ways you may examine things ... like tapes you keep playing over and over inside your head ... like roles you get stuck in ... like ways you limit how you feel and think. I'll draw upon everything I've learned over the years about helping people build happier lives, but I'll be focusing on helping you tackle challenges that you decide to take on.
I may suggest working on or honing some helpful skills and techniques - particular skills to help you ovecome specific roadblocks. Some examples:
-
If anxiety is ruling your life, we can work on learning how to identify and change thought-behavior patterns that feed it. I can help you learn relaxation techniques that reduce anxious feelings.
- If you find you have little "gas in your tank" ... if you feel tired a lot or lack enthusiasm for things you enjoy ... we can work on figuring out how to get your mojo back.
-
If you struggle making or keeping close relationships, we can work on ways of reaching out to others and ways of building intimacy and closeness.
- If you walk around with a loud judge on your shoulder who frequently puts down what you say and do, we can work on ways of transforming that judge into a kind, supportive life coach.
Combining insight - understanding why you do things and what you'd like to change - with skills, and experimenting with using those skills, can help you build the life you want.
How to Get Started
How to Get Started
If you feel like you might like to try to take a psychologist guide along with you on your journey, I'd suggest you begin by thinking about where you'd like to travel ... about your destination.
You might begin by thinking about this: A year from now, looking back upon your life today, what would you like to be able to say about how you changed yourself and your life? What would you like to say about how you changed the ways you relate to yourself and to others?
You might begin by thinking about this: A year from now, looking back upon your life today, what would you like to be able to say about how you changed yourself and your life? What would you like to say about how you changed the ways you relate to yourself and to others?
Contact me to take it from here!