WHAT IS PSYCHOTHERAPY?
Psychotherapy is a gentle, supportive and often subtle process of exploration through dialogue, that allows the client to safely access a deeper level of self-awareness than is usually possible alone, facilitating deep healing and personal growth where it is needed.
The psychotherapy relationship aims to support the whole person and typically engages with with multiple aspects a person's experience. There can be specific or more general aims. Psychotherapy can perhaps best be viewed as a creative partnership: the relationship between therapist and client is the medium through which learning and development takes place. As mutual trust and understanding grows, it becomes increasingly possible to explore aspects of experience that are painful, confusing or hard to verbalise and to try to make sense of them.
The psychotherapist usually remains open to the client's viewpoint, rather than bringing their own, and this kind of interaction can feel strange and unfamiliar initially; however, allowing the client's perspective to take centre stage means their inner world can be better recognised, reflected upon and explored. Anything can be discussed in psychotherapy. The practice of speaking, observing and reflecting on one's life in a place of safety, without judgement or fear of repercussion, allows defences to be overcome and a clearer sense of oneself as a whole can begin to emerge.
Relationally-based integrative psychotherapy uses a variety of theoretical approaches and adapts to best suit clients' needs. The client is respected as an equal, as human, and as the expert on themselves.
Developmental psychology and neuro-psychoanalytic understandings can help clients think afresh about their own childhoods and histories and update the conscious or unconscious narrative understandings they may hold around their families of origin, significant relationships and subsequent life events. Finding space and support for re-telling one's own story in this way, taking account of social and familial context, and contemporary research-based understandings of personality development, can help heal and integrate old traumas and bring a new sense of certainty around personal identity.
A central psychoanalytically-informed psychotherapeutic aim is to identify conscious and unconscious beliefs and strategies for dealing with relationships, especially where these become noticeable in the therapeutic relationship itself. The therapist offers the client a safe, supportive and accepting relationship to 'play' in, where dynamics can be discussed, and alternative ways of being in relationships can be explored.
Work moves at a pace and in a direction dictated by the client. What is needed from the therapeutic relationship may take time to emerge or change over time.
BENEFITS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
Psychotherapy is not focussed on treating specific disorders but rather on supporting people to develop a stronger sense of self awareness and agency and to help improve their relationships with others in the world around them.
People often come to therapy because they are experiencing psychological distress, commonly depression, anxiety and related symptoms. However, anyone who is experiencing difficulty with relationships or with managing their lives can benefit from therapy. Psychotherapy can equally be helpful for people who are not experiencing crisis but are interested in developing more conscious awareness of their habitual relational patterns and ways of seeing the world and perhaps exploring new ways of being in relation to others. People engaged in creative practices and professions, managing families or operating in teams, engaging in life changing decision making processes or in entrepreneurial ventures large and small often find therapy useful.
OUTCOMES AND ENDINGS
Both therapist and client tend to recognise when things feel ready to come to an end. By this stage the client will generally feel more empowered in their lives, confident in their capacity to respond to difficult situations, better able to articulate their needs in relation to others and to meet others' needs in turn. People often have a sense of healing from traumatic experiences, and of being more at peace with painful relationships or circumstances. There may be clarity around important decisions and about priorities for life moving forward, alongside an ability to cope with a degree of ongoing uncertainty, Usually by this stage the client feels confidence around meeting the challenges to come without therapeutic support and the relationship can be let go.
If you have questions about whether psychotherapy might be beneficial for you, feel free to get in touch for more information.
