Psychotherapy

As a psychotherapist I’ve been focused on helping individuals, couples, and teenagers find more enjoyment and satisfaction in their lives. Psychotherapy, also called counseling, talk therapy, psycho-social therapy, and just therapy, is useful when people have difficulty with –

Focusing on work
Anxiety
Depression
Family conflict
Anger
Thoughts about killing yourself and/or someone else
Fatigue
Getting to sleep
Forgetting to eat
Wanting to get high and not think
Worrying about whether you’re “going crazy”
Performing sexually
Handling a serious health problem
Recovering from abuse
Loneliness
Mood swings
Lack of motivation
Finding a safe place and resting their mind and body

I ask questions like these –

What do you hope to achieve by coming for therapy?
When, how, and where did your problem begin?
How did you attempt to solve the problem? What worked and what didn’t?
How do you think I might be helpful

The next step is to consider your options.

Options in psychotherapy are many as there are many types of therapies and many types of therapists. Here are some questions people can ask to simplify the process –

Who has successfully helped other people with the problem I have? (You might talk with your physician, minister, or a close friend or relative.)
Would I work best with a female or a male?
Do I want to be seen alone or with my partner or family?
Would I like to be part of a group focusing on this problem?
Do I have a problem such as substance abuse that calls for specialized training? (Much of this work is done in groups.)

Individual therapy, hypnotherapy, couple therapy, family therapy, and group therapy all have particular advantages –

Individual therapy has great flexibility as you get to choose what to work on and you don’t have to consider the feelings of someone else. You develop a plan and work on it.

Hypnotherapy and relaxation techniques can help you more quickly –

Quiet your mind, rest, and sleep.
Obtain information related to depression and anxiety such as their source and origin
Refocus from the past to the present
Learn new behaviors

Couple therapy, also called relationship therapy, can help a couple look together at –

How to maintain a feeling of being connected
What each one does that causes a disconnect
How to facilitate reconnecting.

Group therapy provides the help and support of the group leader and of the group members. You get to see how others tackle a problem like yours.

The key to success in psychotherapy is to find a psychotherapist who understands your problem and who you’re comfortable confiding in. You may need to deal with painful feelings and experiences and you need to be able to be truthful about the problem and truthful about the effect the therapy is having on you.

You can contact me for more information. Here are some websites on psychotherapy that may be helpful:

Mayo Clinic

www.mayoclinic.org/tests…/psychotherapy/…/prc-20013335

Psych Central

http://psychcentral.com/psychotherapy/

WebMD

http://blogs.webmd.com/mental-health/2011/09/how-does-psychotherapy-work-part-1.html