Healing in Therapy | Letter from a Therapist
September 8, 2023
Letter from a therapist about what healing in therapy entails. How do you know if you’re on the path to healing in therapy? What is your therapist’s role? What is your role?
What makes us different
We believe in a therapy experience that goes beyond surface-level fixes.
Our approach focuses on nurturing emotional wellness, embracing individuality, promoting inclusivity, and empowering you to explore the depths of your inner world. Here’s what makes us different:
Emotional Wellness
- Emotional Wellness isn’t just the absence of symptoms the same way that physical wellness isn’t just the absence of disease. Emotional wellness involves living a full authentic life.
- We’re not working on getting you to feel better. Feeling better is a short-term fix. We want to move beyond that and towards living a satisfying life where you feel connected with others and connected with your self.
- Through long-term therapy with us, we aim to help you build self-awareness of your internal life such as thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations and strengthen your ability to use these feelings as a guide to effectively go through challenges and change.
Non-Diagnostic Therapy
- Because every individual is unique, we do not make assumptions about how to approach treatment based solely on the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) category of symptoms or follow a prescribed treatment approach based on the box you’re fitted into.
- Don’t get me wrong — a diagnosis is a helpful way to conceptualize different issues. It allows us to relate to others who might have similar challenges and it’s of course needed for insurance. At the same time, it can also be reductive and doesn’t account for the full complexity and individuality of each person.
- Diagnoses tend to indicate that something is wrong with you, rather than validating that your suffering may make sense within the context of what has happened to you. Our approach to therapy will holistically recognize your strengths, identities, physical wellness, your family history, the past and current social, cultural, and economic location(s) of you and your family.
Inclusive, Anti – Racist and LGBTQ+ Affirming
- We live in a society founded on systemic oppression and racism and we want to be mindful of how oppression and all the "-isms" can impact your life and mental health.
- As a practice, we know that we may not always get it right, but we strive to be educated about various backgrounds and identities. We will never assume your experiences or the nuances of your experience because everyone’s identity and worldview are unique.
- We strive to be sensitive to the ways that our genders, racial-ethnic identities, countries of origin, sexuality, personal and family immigration histories, religions, abilities and body sizes can shape our inner thought and emotional life. We invite you to bring all the nuanced and diverse parts of your identity to this process so that we can help you process life experiences in the context of your unique intersectional identities.
Psychodynamic & Evidence-based Therapy
- Using a psychodynamic approach, we believe our past life experiences impact the choices we make in the present.
- The more we explore & understand ourselves, the better we can recognize and identify self-defeating patterns that we fall into. We can examine and confront unresolved issues happening outside of your awareness.
- You can change the things that no longer serve you. And you can learn healthier ways to deal with these issues so that you can live a more fulfilling life.
We also incorporate techniques from other modalities to individualize our approach to your unique needs.
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
- Trauma-informed psychotherapy
- Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
- Motivational Interviewing
As Featured In
Prioritize your mental health and self-care from the comfort of your home.
Schedule a phone consult here. We’ll chat about any questions you might have, and it’ll be an opportunity for me to learn more about you and what you’re going through.
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