Individual therapy is a process of working through emotional distress. You move from the problem toward a solution. Your therapist works to create a warm, accepting, and safe environment. This is optimal for you to explore your inner-most thoughts, feeling, and beliefs. This is more than an intellectual discussion about your life. Therapy involves explorations of aspects of your personality that you may find uncomfortable. It involves accessing under-utilized strengths and embracing positive and negative emotions. Individual therapy can treat a variety of issues:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Codependency
- Abandonment Issues
- PTSD and trauma related stress
- Survivors of interpersonal trauma
- childhood abuse, domestic/dating violence, sexual trauma, and emotional trauma
- Grief and loss
- Life transitions
- marriage, birth, raising and launching children, aging parents, retirement and more
Problems and goals
Therapy starts with a discussion of goals and expectations. In other words, when therapy is over, what will be different about how your think, feel, and behave. There also needs to be a clear understanding of what is the problem. Clients come to therapy unable to articulate a clear understanding of the problem. Your therapist will help you in this. For example, Mark comes to therapy with anger problems. Mark and his therapist come to understand that anger does not show up all the time. They recognize Mark is prone to anger outbursts when he feels the situation is out of control. This helps create hope for Mark that the problem is not as big as once thought. This helps the therapist to know where to focus treatment.
Do I have to talk about my past?
First, let us define what we mean by the past. The past is a timeline starting from moment of birth through the day of your appointment. Therefore, we will be a routine part of the discussion. Your past will help your therapist get to know your better. This allows your therapist to tailor a treatment plan specific to your needs.
How often and to what depth your past will be discussed is a joint decision made between you and your therapist. For example, let us suppose a client experiences an anxiety attack in the middle of session. The therapist will focus on the anxiety instead of asking about their childhood.
Wrapping up
As you begin to feel better, your therapist will suggest meet less often. Therapy sessions start by meeting weekly or every other week. From there meetings change to every 3 to 4 weeks. Some clients will decide that they are ready to end therapy at this point. Some client choose to meet every 6-8 weeks until they decide to end therapy. Your therapist will provide input and recommendations on the decision to end therapy. However, it is the client’s decision when to end therapy.
Individual therapy is a process of working through emotional distress. You move from the problem toward a solution. Your therapist works to create a warm, accepting, and safe environment. This is optimal for you to explore your inner-most thoughts, feeling, and beliefs. This is more than an intellectual discussion about your life. Therapy involves explorations of aspects of your personality that you may find uncomfortable. It involves accessing under-utilized strengths and embracing positive and negative emotions. Individual therapy can treat a variety of issues:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Codependency
- Abandonment Issues
- PTSD and trauma related stress
- Survivors of interpersonal trauma
- childhood abuse, domestic/dating violence, sexual trauma, and emotional trauma
- Grief and loss
- Life transitions
- marriage, birth, raising and launching children, aging parents, retirement and more
Problems and goals
Therapy starts with a discussion of goals and expectations. In other words, when therapy is over, what will be different about how your think, feel, and behave. There also needs to be a clear understanding of what is the problem. Clients come to therapy unable to articulate a clear understanding of the problem. Your therapist will help you in this. For example, Mark comes to therapy with anger problems. Mark and his therapist come to understand that anger does not show up all the time. They recognize Mark is prone to anger outbursts when he feels the situation is out of control. This helps create hope for Mark that the problem is not as big as once thought. This helps the therapist to know where to focus treatment.
Do I have to talk about my past?
First, let us define what we mean by the past. The past is a timeline starting from moment of birth through the day of your appointment. Therefore, we will be a routine part of the discussion. Your past will help your therapist get to know your better. This allows your therapist to tailor a treatment plan specific to your needs.
How often and to what depth your past will be discussed is a joint decision made between you and your therapist. For example, let us suppose a client experiences an anxiety attack in the middle of session. The therapist will focus on the anxiety instead of asking about their childhood.
Wrapping up
As you begin to feel better, your therapist will suggest meet less often. Therapy sessions start by meeting weekly or every other week. From there meetings change to every 3 to 4 weeks. Some clients will decide that they are ready to end therapy at this point. Some client choose to meet every 6-8 weeks until they decide to end therapy. Your therapist will provide input and recommendations on the decision to end therapy. However, it is the client’s decision when to end therapy.
