Can’t bring me down. Nope. Another great day without you today. You’re filling the void of true and genuine love, but I can fill that void by allowing myself to immerse wholly and deeply in the relationships I have. Tomorrow, I’ll probably talk about YOU a lot; I might even tell strangers about you! All I know is I’ll be thinking about you and loathing you and missing you…but I won’t take you back.

Psychotherapy is a kind of treatment that focuses on evaluating the thoughts and feelings of an individual in order to help them achieve a deeper sense of self-awareness. It aims to allow patients to reveal themselves in order to identify the issues that are troubling them. This kind of treatment would help an individual understand themselves and his behavior towards other people. This will lead the way for a person to attain a sense of responsibility for all the experiences, with the purpose of taking off weight on an individual’s personal battle within himself.

The possibilities are endless with psychotherapy. Even so, there is an important need for a patient to be able to understand everything that a practitioner is telling him. This would be really difficult for patients who are already suffering from worse kinds of mental problems, which would make them incapable of achieving a clear understanding of what is going on.

Psychotherapy treatments are done according to the case of the patient. An original approach is the exclusive session between the patient and practitioner where in they are sitting across each other privately. This type of environment would encourage the establishment of trust for the patient to be assured that his problems are shared only to the practitioner.

Some psychotherapy treatments are also offered for a group of people, like perhaps a family where in members feel the need for psychotherapy in solving domestic issues which are affecting each of them. Other psychotherapy treatments include psychodynamic psychotherapy, interpersonal and existential. This requires a good therapist which can ensure that harmony is attained even if there is an obvious conflict at hand. Often times, this kind of therapy session would require more than just one therapist to handle a treatment at once.

In order to be a psychotherapist, one must have to get a hold of a degree in psychotherapy. Psychotherapist education requirements are not the same for each state. Although most would require a minimum of a master’s degree, while others would even require a doctorate degree which usually includes written and oral exams, supervised clinical work and a dissertation.

A profession in psychotherapy gives a practitioner a chance to develop his skills as he gets more experienced with handling different kinds of patients. He will get to put into action the lessons that he learned in school as well as the actual learning from the treatment sessions with patients. In college, a student will be given the opportunity to play the role of both the patient and the practitioner in order to feel the sentiments of both.

Psychotherapy can be learned not only through the traditional college campuses, but also at the convenience of using the internet. The theories can be fully completed through an online learning program, and some practical work has to be done at some local learning centers. An online learning program allows people with current jobs to study a new course without having to give up their jobs. This can prepare them for the possibility of shifting to a new career.

Aspiring psychotherapists are advised to do some research early on to prepare themselves for formal classes. The need to learn the process, background as well as the types of psychotherapy (such as existential and psychodynamic psychotherapy). Understanding the fundamentals of psychotherapy would enable you to discern if this is really the right career for you. Once you have made the decision of giving it a go due to your high interest in the profession, then you would likely be a successful psychotherapist in the future.

There are times in our lives when we find ourselves holding on to some things.  Our past worries would continue on bothering us even after going through a lot of fuss. There are moments when we are almost at the point of losing our minds.  These are when we would wonder if we are already in need of the help of a psychotherapist to help us surpass the aches.

When a person is already at the state of thinking hard on the probability of seeking for professional help of a psychotherapist, then the need is probably there.  Not a single person would give it that much thought if his problems are not that tough.  Next thing would be the questions that would follow on how long it would take for the treatment to complete, how much it would cost and above all, if this type of therapy  would indeed really help.

For a psychotherapy treatment to be effective, a patient must have faith on the practitioner and trust him enough with personal details on which the practitioner would base his diagnosis upon.  There are types of mental problems which needs a long term treatment, on which an established relationship between the practitioner and the patient would be really helpful.

What is psychotherapy? Psychotherapy mainly deals with the assessment of an individual’s feelings and way of thinking, with the intention of allowing the person to have a deep understanding of who he is in order to discern his true self and acknowledge them.  It also paves a way for a person to determine how he handles his relationships with others, which in a way would affect their well-being.  In addition, it is about the comprehension on how you see yourself and others, increasing your determination in facing tough trials that life would throw your way.

A person going through therapy would somehow see a goal to be so unreachable at the start.  Some would just quit, thinking that they could not make it anyway.  There are just some types of mental difficulties which needs a long term treatment.  Years of psychotherapy would be needed with the same practitioner.  Changing to different psychotherapists would not be helpful, as it would only cause more delay in attaining your goal.

The goal of success may seem to be very far away, but the steps going there is certainly just right in front of you.  A psychotherapist would be there to direct you in the right path, with all the support you need.  It would also be of great help if you would reward yourself for every successful step you make towards reaching your goal to recovery.  It is not wise to get easily discouraged by the ghost of your past as this would only post a threat in reaching your goal.

A psychotherapist has a high sense of commitment in listening to their patients and paying close attention to concealed details which may just be the cause of the problem.  A remarkable psychotherapist would use all that he has learned both in school and in his personal experiences with patients.  Their greatest aim is to help put up an optimistic outlook for their patients, in the method that best suits the patient.

The highest aim of a psychotherapist is to promote a healthy mental state and be able to give the best guidance to patients.  Psychotherapists would also somehow feel frustrated in times when patients are not behaving properly, which entails a longer period of treatment.  But on the good side, it is also of great satisfaction to them every time patients show signs of improvement.

Above all, having the thought of what is psychotherapy will give you better understanding about it.

What is psychotherapy?

Individual psychotherapy entails getting together with a therapist by means of one-on-one counseling. Therapy is a process of evaluating your thoughts, emotions, physical feelings and relationship habits as a way to obtain greater self-awareness and empathy for yourself and others, as well as to reveal the ways you may unconsciously deny yourself the full potential to live your life healthy and complete. In individual psychotherapy this could mean figuring out how to tune in to yourself and other people in new ways, developing an understanding of how you observe the world and your relationships, fortifying your strength for dealing with life’s challenges and accepting personal responsibility for your experiences in an effort to decrease your participation in your own struggling.

What should you expect at your first visit to Psychotherapy?

When you show up for your preliminary consultation visit you should be requested to read and complete paperwork related to familiarizing yourself with client rights and responsibilities, confidentiality, requesting medical health insurance billing information and acknowledging your comprehension of the payment policy. You’ll be able to request coordination of services with any other appropriate health professional whose treatment you receive, including psychiatrists and medical doctors.

Next you should sit down with your therapist to supply a history of the issues that have brought you to therapy, and be provided the chance to ask any questions you may have regarding the therapy process. Your therapist will help you to outline typical categories for your treatment objectives and commence to establish possible tangible measures of your improvement towards those objectives. Your therapist will match all of your objective areas to appropriate skill sets and together you should layout a treatment strategy which will begin your progress towards achieving those goals. Finally, you’ll talk over and agree upon a schedule and frequency for going to therapy. That frequency will depend on a number of factors, including the severity or urgency of the issues that encouraged you to seek therapy, your perception of your commitment to keeping up with therapeutic work in between appointments and financial restrictions or health insurance coverage limitations.

What should you expect from ongoing Psychotherapy visits?

In the course of therapy, your therapist will rely upon a variety of strategies to influence change in the trend of the treatment solution goals you’ve selected. Continuing therapy occurs in an organized and structured format. At the start of every session you will assess your progress in the direction of your goals, including a conversation regarding the results of any homework exercises. You may go over any new current issues. At the conclusion of each session you will concur on a recommendation for homework to be accomplished by your next session. The framework of this format is designed to preserve a concentration on resolving issues, as opposed to just discussing them. Additionally, your therapist will continually plan for and talk about cancellation of therapy. This planning is designed not just to assist you to understand when you will be prepared to finish therapy but also to offer you numerous opportunities to investigate how you feel about leaving therapy well in advance of that departure.

Summary

By dealing with problematic behaviors, negative core beliefs, unexpressed or challenging emotions, unresolved turmoil, along with your emotional and physical reactions to all of these areas, therapy can assist you in achieving positive mental health and emotional well-being. These strategies can be used to treat a wide variety of different issues including stress, couples counseling, PTSD, depression, relationship issues, anxiety, grief, addiction, sexuality issues, OCD and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

The Center for Health and Healing is based in New Orleans. Their counseling staff are well-trained and experienced in assisting people in addressing and coping with a wide variety of issues, many of which are discussed on their website at http://www.neworleanstherapycenter.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7331060

When people think about psychotherapy, they often pictured the stereotypical image of a psychiatrist who has a patient laid out on the couch, spilling their guts while the doctor sits calmly with a clipboard taking notes. This is a remarkably narrow view of the field of psychiatric medicine, and the truth is that the psychotherapist has to take a very active role in the treatment of any patient, no matter what their apparent symptoms may be. There are literally hundreds of different techniques and methods that psychiatric experts use to interact with their patients, and each of them has a role that is every bit as real as any tool used by a surgeon.

Psychotherapy primarily involves therapy through conversation. The therapist listens and interacts with the patient about the origins of their problem, and it is in this way the medical professionals can learn more about where behavioral problems come from. In the future, perhaps you will be possible to actually cut psychological disorders off at the pass by avoiding their causes in the course of normal living. Until then, conversation and continue to be an important tool used by psychiatric therapists to bring relief to people who are ailing from some sort of mental stigma.

The goal of psychotherapy is to get the patient to consciously realize what aspects of their behavior are causing their irregular health problems. Sometimes habits that are developed by people lead to physical tics, such as twitches or verbal phrases did become almost involuntary. Patients begin to exhibit behaviors even after the original causes have been done away with for some time, and through reasoning, psychotherapists can help to work with the patient to internalize the reality that there’s no need to continue these types of behaviors.

Once this element of control becomes a reality for the patient, they began to take hold of themselves once again. Psychological symptoms such as paranoia can be dealt with through this type of behavioral modification. With any luck, pages that are undergoing psychological therapy will be able to return to a fully functional and normal life, just like anyone else.

Some types of behavioral modification may require a different approach in order to be successful, such as in the case of things like alcoholism. In these situations, the most therapy way of dealing with the problem is to put the patient in a social setting with other people who are dealing with the exact same ailment. By allowing people to relate to one another, they can do away with the illusion that they are the only person suffering with the problem. This has lead to highly successful therapy programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, which has been a cornerstone of treatment for many years for people suffering from alcohol abuse. Psychotherapy maintains that the best way to deal with a problem is by talking through it, and that conversation is the golden key to healthy living.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4337413

People with continuing problems in their life or struggling with relational, emotional issues visit Psychologist for psychotherapy. In essence Psychotherapy is well defined process model focused on helping an individual to heal from problems of life and provide them a constructive way to deal with ongoing problems in life.

The reasons for taking Psychotherapy can be many. Mainly, it is due to increase in stress, which an individual is unable to bear and often ends up taking wrong decision in life. People break down under mounting stress from divorce, relational issues, business, job loss and due to challenges in new career.

The question is when should you visit a Psychologist? This answer will come from your Physician. Your physician will refer to a Psychologist based on your condition. The physician will recommend you to visit Psychologist for Psychotherapy therapy. The ongoing issues are hard for individual to deal and it is causing great deal of pain to them. Also it is not going away but continuing and causing more problem and pain to individuals.

The goal of psychotherapy is to make change in person’s life and provide them strength and reasoning to think and react about the current issues and problems in life. Between patient and doctor a therapy plan is created. Psychologist will take patient to the root of the problem and help them in getting new perspective in life.

This helps patients to look at exiting issues with new perspective and gives them strength and confidence to deal with current problems in life. Depending upon the severity of mental health the therapy sessions are scheduled once in 2 weeks on once a month. The sessions can last for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

After few sessions of therapy the patient starts gaining confidence and clarity to deal with situation. With focused mind and with greater ability to judge the issues the decisions are made in right direction. After full course patients start feeling normal and is able to keep stress level down by taking right corrective decisions in life. The key to successful therapy is the individual’s will to try therapy and listen to psychologist.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2578414

The reasons for our interest in things beyond the “biological” are straight forward. First, as it’s hard to draw a line in the sand separating where the brain ends and the mind begins and this mind that doesn’t separate clearly from the brain cares about our psychosocial environments. In other words, psychosocial events are, more times than not, an important cause for our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. This does not mean biology does not matter. But it does mean that any exam of mind/brain issues needs to include a psychosocial assessment to ensure that the collected data is non-biased and thus valid.

One of the unintended consequences of the DSM descriptive approach has been a shift in the focus of the mental health interview: from the broader themes of nature AND nurture and the implicit goal of attempting to establish cause and effect type of relationships between the different layers of one’s history, to a symptoms-focused, descriptive only approach. The gains in precision came at the price of slashing the context, which, as it turns out, is essential in understanding the deeper levels of pathology. And by “deeper level” I am not referring to the psycho-dynamic foundation of that out-of-consciousness conflict, but only to the fact the there are different levels of description. And chance is that the most superficial layer is, well, the most superficial one. Meaning, subject to much deformation and bias; as such not nearly as accurate as the deeper levels.

Case and point: A case of chronic exhaustion

Mr. Tiredalot is a middle age gentleman complaining of no longer been able to enjoy things (including sex), feeling exhausted all the time, amotivated, dragging his feet, unable to concentrate, not sleeping for the last few weeks. There are no medical or substance abuse issues. Mr. Tiredalot denies any recent stressors. As he meets DSM criteria for depression he is started on an SSRI.

It turns out that Mr. Tiredalot’s sleep disturbance started after changing his mattress a few weeks back. A softer mattress was bought by his wife as she did not like the prior mattress that she found too hard.  Not only that Mr. Tiredalot does not find the new mattress as comfortable, but going to bed each night brings a lot of resentment about the fact that his wife decided to switch mattress without consulting  him. Going to bed turned into a “nightly” reminder of the fact that she rarely engages him in any decision making. Since the mattress switching conflict began Mr. Tiredalot wakes up in the morning with a slightly sore back and a terrible mood. Each time when he tried to breach the subject of the mattress the wife dismissed it as a “waste of time talking about it as it is a done deal”. Which only further escalated Mr. Tiredalot’s frustration. His troubles/stressors don’t reach the required threshold for an “adjustment disorder” and the patient himself does not identify any of the above as stressors.

The point of this example is that an interview focusing exclusively on a description could actually miss the point.

Appearences are misleading and an antidepressant is clearly NOT recommended in this case. To see a couple’s therapist would be the best intervention for this patient at this time.

Understanding the psychosocial context – in this case the primary relationship issues with secondary sleep issues and tertiary mood issues – would not only save this patient from an antidepressant but likely many years of grief in a tense marriage.

It is my belief that the route to long lasting happiness is through peace of mind.  With you I explore ways to reduce and remove those common obstacles that prevent peace of mind such as stress, anxiety, irrational fears, negative lifestyles plus many other challenges life’s journey presents us with.

I utilise a full range of counselling techniques including CBT, MBCT, Psychodynamic, Jungian, Humanistic, Gestalt and Person Centred therapies. Through the integration of these techniques, with careful consideration to your individuality and unique needs, together, we discover new ways to cope, to think, to feel and to act, gaining new perspectives that increase health, improve relationships and enhance the quality of life, each day.

If you would like to find out more in a private communication please use the simple form below and I will be in touch.

Here is my Winter Solstice offering to you.

Thirteen crows perch
on the wires
above the persimmons.
These fruit have sung to me for months
with their bright refusal to be melancholy
I have watched their curves fill into sweet polished cheeks
their orange clarity against the dying leaves.
It is past Thanksgiving, almost Winter Solstice
and so the crows and I are gathered here
to a communion of ripeness.
Who will eat first
the raven priests or I?
Who will feast on these last fruits, robust
while leaves show their age
give in,
take one last spin to Earth
a leave-taking?
The persimmons glow.
They hold a star within,
taste foreign
dry-crisp
almost too sweet
not orange, not apple.

It takes years
to bend the tough persimmon wood
into the tea boxes of Japan.
Yet these most prized.

Now see,
I have written too long.
Up in the persimmon tree
five crows are feasting.
The fruit yields empty baskets
orange skins hold to branches
like tiny lanterns.

RAS. 11-30-2012

Think about it this way: the patient – therapist relationship (and by therapist I am psychiatrists, psychologists, etc.) is characterized by an immense power differential. The therapist is in many respects God-like in the eyes of his patient: omniscient (appearing as if he knows everything about the patient), omnipotent (with the ability of curing deep-seated or maybe even deeper-seeded conflicts), the subject of unfiltered transference (positive for the most part) and yet available.

Who wouldn’t like to have God like figure on the line? So when those always urgent phone calls start coming in the middle of the night, when the patient starts calling repeatedly about trivial matters, when tapering the visits results in increased symptoms, and the discussion of termination is pre-emptied by sudden exacerbations, consider “therapist dependence” in your diagnostic formulation.

Of course, “dependence” on the therapist is not always bad. In fact, during the initial stages of therapy, especially for patients who come from a background of poor object relations, “dependence” might in fact be a good thing. In such instances “dependence” might indicate that the patient is finally able to trust in the context of a safe relationship.

In later stages of therapy however, especially when dependence occurs after relative independence has already been established, chance is that the patient is experiencing a maladaptive regression.

What is the solution? First, as always, prophylaxis is gold. Rather than open-ended therapy decide when the discharge date/the final session will be scheduled from the very beginning. There is a lot to be said – and good data as well – supporting the fact that time-limited therapy might be more effective that open-ended therapy.  If the patient manifests dependence do not “up the ante”, in other words, do not offer heroic and out of character solutions (such as special accommodations, rescheduling for more convenient times, changing your process by “doing more as the patient is doing less”). Any such responses can become a positive reinforcement for what in essence is a maladaptive behavior.

Instead, keep doing what you have been doing all along and do not change the termination date. Chance is that the patient will be able to mobilize enough internal resources to hold it together through termination if you would only give him your vote of confidence that he can do so. For the minority that cannot, a return/continuation of therapy might be recommended. If so, it’s usually better if you let another therapist take over. The rationale for switching therapists follows the idea that one needs to remain consistent in preventing positive reinforcements for maladaptive traits or behaviors.

Not to mention that if the patient did not improve within the parameters that you discussed initially you might not be the best therapist (for that one patient)) anyway and they might really benefit from no longer seeing you.

What causes the Holiday blues? Stress, the demands of busy schedules and families, financial strains, and overdoing it with food and drink, all contribute to these feelings. Symptoms include feeling sad, anxious, irritable, headaches, stomach ailments, and insomnia. The good news is these symptoms are manageable, with some thought and planning before we hit the holidays!

• Be realistic with your expectations of the holidays. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or dreading family get-togethers, make your excuses, and spend that time enjoying an activity that makes you happy. If you feel you must participate, be sure to have an “escape plan” such as driving your own car to the occasion and staying in a hotel, where you can return to if things get to be too much. Keep in mind, no one has Norman Rockwell worthy family get-togethers.

• Know your boundaries! This includes saying “no” to too many holiday party invitations, and know how and when to excuse yourself from time and energy draining obligations.

• Avoid overdoing it with eating and drinking. When we’re not feeling our best physically, it’s hard to feel our best emotionally.

• Stay active! Even with the colder days, it’s important to keep moving. This can mean going for a walk around your neighborhood, join a gym, or grab some friends to shop and walk til you drop!

If you find yourself experiencing a worsening of any of these symptoms, you may be dealing with a more serious issue, such as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) or even Clinical Depression. Both issues should be addressed professionally. Counseling is an important tool in fighting depression. If with our hectic Holiday schedules, it’s important not to put off seeking help. Research show that once a person experiences depression, if it’s left untreated, there is a strong likelihood of a second, possibly more severe reoccurrence in the future. Please visit my website: http://www.gacounseling.com. You are worth it!

Now the leaves are down we can see areas in the woods where some of the more invasive shrubs have taken hold. One of our naturalist friends believes they will not be able to thrive in more dense woodland, but here they are doing quite well, at least along the margins. Some of them are undoubtedly escapes from our yard. We inherited Burning Bush when we purchased our home. Neighbors also have the plant, which has striking red leaves in Autumn. It also is quite invasive, defying all our efforts to eradicate it in our yard, and now spreading into the wooded parkland behind us.

Invasive plant species push out native plants. Burning Bush and other shrubs take over the forest floor, displacing the far less aggressive native species. This is an old story. Given time, these invaders will settle into their new niches and become the norm for this woodland ecosystem. The same pattern is repeated throughout the living world.

We see this cycle in the lives of people, too. In psychotherapy we witness the suffering that arises when the thoughts, beliefs and demands of others displace the native knowing of our young people. These aliens, called “introjects” in the clinical literature, push the deep knowing of Self far into the recesses of Psyche. Introjects weave together a False Self. Yet this false self is also natural. Often, psychotherapy is a process of exploring these alien ideas and perceptions, examining them closely, keeping those that have real value for Self, and discarding the others. From this careful weeding arises space for the real Self to return from exile. Yet the Self will be changed by the interaction with others.

From a shamanic point of view, we see energies and energy beings attached to the energetic fields of those who come to us for aid. Usually those disturbances are clearly not Self, and can be removed. If they have long resided with the person, we may have to support the individual (or family) in resisting the urge to invite those aliens back into Self. (Over time, thoughts and entities can begin to feel like Self, making separating from them particularly challenging.) Often, this means removing those energies several times.

In the wider world of human experience we witness the clash of cultures, warfare, and genocide. Ethnic cleansing is nothing more than the displacement of one people so that another may utilize the resources of an area. Inevitably, the invaders develop elaborate stories to justify their actions. Those who are displaced suffer profound physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual trauma. Invaders, and the displace,  experience long-term disturbances to Psyche and culture.

Shamanism and psychotherapy are restorative ecologies. Each seeks to remove that which does not belong so the vibrant ecosystem waiting below can grow and flower. Given the opportunity, ecosystems return to balance, often blossoming into great beauty. It is the task of the healer to hold a vision of wholeness, to imagine restoration, and to make a space for healing. From our work with individuals, families, and communities, we are slowly learning how to extend healing to entire cultures and societies, and discovering such healing is a multigenerational process.

It may be the only one. Blaming people for creating mental illness has mostly gone out of style since we made too many enemies blaming parents, mothers mostly, for their screwed up kids. These days we prefer to blame genetics, which I suppose is another way of blaming parents, albeit for something they don’t have any control over. Mostly we prefer not to dwell on issues of etiology and get right down to the business of patching people up.

DID (or MPD, if you are old school) is the significant exception to this rule. In case you don’t read a selection of the DSM-IV-TR (the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, the mental health practitioner’s Bible) every night before going to bed, DID is when the person behaves as though he or she is really several distinct persons all inhabiting one body. In classic cases, the individual alters have no knowledge of each other or memory of what the others do. One actor appears on stage at a time and all the others go to a kind of sleep. In the natural world, however, we frequently see alters who have consciousness of each other, as the patients drop in and out of therapy, gaining insight along the way.

Cheryl/Marcy was one such patient, although Marcy only gave me a general sense of how many of them there were. “Oh, a half dozen or so.” She was certain that Cheryl knew about none of them. Marcy had great contempt for Cheryl, whom she considered an incompetent, befuddled nincompoop, cloyingly dependent on others for reassurance. Well, if you had a half dozen or so people inhabiting your body and doing things with it without your knowledge; you might be befuddled, too.

“There’s Sarah, who’s three and doesn’t do anything but cry; Monique, who’s six and likes to play; Joe, who likes cars and computers; Bubbles, who picks up guys; and Chloe, well, you don’t want to meet Chloe. She’s a violent bitch.”

I added, “And there’s you, who takes care of her.” There’s always one who takes care of the host personality.

Then I asked what I always ask, “Is there a stage manager? Someone who decides who’s going to take over?”

But nobody ever knows. “We just do whatever needs to be done.”

The theory is that patients develop DID early in life as a way of coping with early childhood trauma. Alters, in some cases, originate in the invisible friends many children create to hold the disavowed aspects of themselves. Are you tired of hurting? Well, it’s not you who are hurting, it’s Sarah. Are you violent and promiscuous, but can’t face yourself afterwards? Bubbles and Chloe will take the fall for you. Are you all grown up, but want to feel as carefree as a child? Ever secretly want to change your gender? There’s always Monique and Joe. Are you concerned that if you act independently and assertively no one will take care of you anymore? Marcy to the rescue.

Do you want to write freely without an inner censor crossing everything out with his blue pencil? Create an S. Harry Zade, as I have, or any other fictional character.

The difference between a patient with DID and an author of fiction is that the patient is better at creating characters. Cheryl’s alters are as real as a person can be without actually having a body to call their own. Unlike any other person with an inner conflict, they all possess a separate compartment of memory. Unlike any other divided, ambivalent person, they can act decisively, without remorse.

The fact that Cheryl must share her body with this whole crew is an inconvenient flaw in the design. Other people are unlikely to recognize when alters take over. Men who go to bed with Bubbles wake up with Joe. Chloe commits a crime and they all serve the time.

The other flaw is that, if Cheryl were to go to a therapist for help with this, or if Marcy were to on her behalf, there’s a good chance she’d encounter a clinician who does not believe that the condition exists. Here’s the problem: the host personality, Cheryl, in this case, is often one who is hysterically dramatic and needy, the very kind of person you’d expect would make all this up.

If you were to go to a clinician who believed in the condition, it would really make his day. This is this very kind of juicy case we shrinks live for. Your therapist would be the star of case conferences, he could really rack up the billable hours, he might even start writing a book and imagine who’ll play him in the movie. He might be more invested in your condition than you are.

The people who don’t believe the condition is real will contend that it is created when a sticky, dramatic, suggestible patient meets an absorbed, energized, naive therapist. It is not produced out of the traumas of childhood, they say, it’s fashioned when client and therapist want to get together and need a cover story to do so.

Here’s where I stand on the subject: I have met people who presented with DID whose condition was convincing and those in whom it wasn’t. I have tried to meet them all on their terms, as tolerant and respectful as I could.

I’ve come to believe that any ideas we have about the self, whether we say it’s singular or plural, are teetering constructs at best, and delusions, at worst. A person is real, but what he says about his personality, or personalities, is always very much a fiction; a fiction that is forever fashioned in collaboration with the people around him.

Life still is sweet even after trauma. It won’t stop the suffering around you to be still, to be kind to yourself but it will give you delight and strength to do your part.

You’ve seen it in the movies, and chances are good that you’ve been through some of it yourself. But what IS psychotherapy, and why do we seem so fascinated by it in our culture? Is it actually helpful? Do different kinds of therapy actually vary, or is it all really one mushy lump?

Of course you could check out Wikipedia’s entry on psychotherapy for a good deal of information on the subject. Probably more information than you want.

Let’s just get a few basic points down. A list format works well enough for this purpose. And, it might be a bit more fun if we start with myths about psychotherapy, and debunking them with some accurate information. So today we’ll talk about what psychotherapy isn’t. As a sculptor creates a statue, she removes what does not belong until the image emerges from the stone. And we’ll talk a little about what it is, once we understand what it isn’t. Or isn’t necessarily.

1. Psychotherapy does not usually involve lying on a couch with your therapist taking notes behind you. That technique arose in Freud’s psychoanalysis and remains a part of the tradition of post-Freudian psychoanalysis-style therapies. There’s nothing wrong with it, and it has its place, but it’s not what most therapists do. Further, even psychoanalysts that use this traditional technique do so generally in the context of intensive, long-term psychoanalysis, and not when the patient is in-crisis. In brief therapies and when patients are in crisis, even psychoanalysts, I am given to understand, generally sit face-to-face with the client. That positioning is the norm in most non-psychoanalytic forms of psychotherapy, which includes most therapies practiced today.

2. Psychotherapy is not necessarily a way to “feel better” or even to “be a better person.” Many forms of psychotherapy emphasize feeling better: being less anxious or depressed, having better control of anger, and so forth. However, I do not have such goals when I practice psychotherapy. Feeling better is nice, but it’s not at the top of the list of what people most want in their lives. When I ask people what they want to write in the memoirs when they’re 80 or 90 years old, they NEVER say, “I want to write that I felt better.” Occasionally they may say something like “I was a good person,” but generally they are much more specific, e.g., “I was a good father.” That’s what I want to do as a therapist. I want to help people become and live what they want to become, what they want to live.

3. Psychotherapy is not primarily a “venting session.” Few, if any therapists would like to define their therapy as primarily venting, even though there is certainly supportive listening involved in most forms of therapy.

4. Psychotherapy does not necessarily involve discussion of your childhood, though often it is worth some discussion. Some forms of therapy may emphasize discussing childhood experiences more than others. In my therapy, it really varies broadly, between extensive discussion of childhood to almost no discussion of one’s early childhood at all. It depends upon what’s needed.

5. Psychotherapy is not primarily a form of expert advice. It is not forbidden, as some people suppose, for therapists to give advice. I give plenty of advice. But that’s not the primary function of therapy, and often advice-giving can be an obstacle to real progress in therapy.

So much for what psychotherapy isn’t. Some words now on what it is, or should be:

6. Psychotherapy provides an opportunity to understand oneself better, to “know yourself.” This is a primary function of therapy. When we are aware of how we function, we can much more effectively live the life we want to live.

7. Psychotherapy provides the opportunity to learn new skills and new ways of responding to old problems. Therapy should provide new ways of seeing and responding to stubborn old problems. Those problems did not go away on their own, with conventional, friendly advice and common sense.

8. Psychotherapy is intended to change your life. It can be aimed at “problems” and framed in terms of “problems,” but I do not encourage that stance. Even therapists who do conceptualize therapy primarily in terms of problems would agree that therapy is intended to change the life of the individual, to shift courses from an unsatisfying life to a more satisfying life.

I will continue this list in the next blog post. My other life priorities are at this moment clamoring eagerly for my attention–literally!

More on therapy at our website:

http://portlandmindful.com/services/adults.html

This is why.

When a person has a psychological problem it takes a long time before they will get help for it. Sometimes it takes several fretful days, sometimes much, much longer. The average, I’m told, is seven years. They don’t get help at first because they think they should be able to handle things on their own or they’re ashamed to admit there’s a problem. At last, they seek help, not because they want to, but because they have to. The problem just overwhelms them. Friends and family can’t handle the problem either. So, they find a counselor and tell him what the problem is. Whatever happens next is crucial. It can determine success or failure, survival or defeat.

The person with the problem might get lucky and bring his problem to just the right person with the right specialty, but it seldom works out that way. Often people can’t pinpoint what their problem is, or they’re mistaken, or there are multiple, overlapping problems. Sometimes the counselor has not advertised their specialty well enough, or there aren’t enough counselors. Most of the time, when counselors specialize, it’s hard to get the right match.

When I began in this field, about twenty-five years ago, there was a large population of suffering people who would go to the substance abuse programs and get told that their problem was mental health. The same people would go to mental health and get told that they had to stop using drugs, they should go to a substance abuse program. Few stuck with the merry-go-round long enough to get help, they just went back to their problem. It was easier that way. The luckier ones got two therapists, one for substance use, one for mental health, as if they really needed two, as if the two issues could not be addressed together and the treatment goals combined.

This, I thought, was insane. The two conditions overlap almost two thirds of the time. That’s a lot of people getting the run around. There’s just no reason for it. There had to be a better way. I developed a program that integrated mental health and substance abuse treatment.

When you share your problem with me I won’t give it back or re-gift it to someone else. I consider it a sacred trust that I do not take lightly. I will never tell you that your problem is too big or too difficult for us to handle together. I’ll probably encourage you to enlist additional supports and I might consult with experts myself, particularly if it’s a problem that is new to me, but I won’t just send you away.

Incidentally, this attitude towards problems is the reason why I’ve done so many things in the course of my career, the reason why few things are new to me. The counselor who refers out all the drug addicts that comes, for instance, never learns a thing about drug addiction and is forced into an ever more narrow specialty. Almost everything I know I’ve learned from clients; they’ve taught me what works, what doesn’t and what it’s like when it doesn’t.

No matter what the problem, this is what works: When we sit with our problems, rather than deny them, run from them, or overreact. When we listen to what our problems are trying to tell us, not so they can be the boss, but so we can learn. When we tame them, rather than evict them or tied them up with duct tape and lock them in the cellar.

I cannot teach you this approach if I just send you to someone else. If I do that, I’ve actually just taught you the opposite: that your problem is too much for me to handle also. That is why I don’t specialize in anything, so I can represent a willingness to accept life on life’s terms.

Here are some apps to support a mindful life. I have not tried them but I have tried NICAMB’s  knowledge of brain plasticity. Then there is Breathe2Relax a free APP for iPhone. I have tried that one and it is a simple effective coach for deep breathing and just long enough to do on a short work break. If you live with your smartphone see what you think.

Avila Beach…a good place to reflect on change where land and water meet in a rich mud full of life.  We can feel into the new and what we no longer need can wash away.

A good antidote to “stuck” is inviting surprise. Most of the time surprise enters through our senses rather than our thoughts, so the more we settle into our bodies (grounding) the more likely we are to receive the surprise when it comes with joy rather than anxiety.

Walking in the redwoods barefoot brought an edge to our attention.

A few notes, a word or two, a sketch, an iPhoto and a new memory is anchored.

Banking new memories helps us past the old.

From “stuck” to “surprise” to “stillness”. Aha!