Individual Therapy
Most people come to therapy as individuals and there are some big advantages in doing so. When you see your therapist alone, you have complete control over what you talk about and who knows about it. This gives you the freedom to explore some things that you might be afraid to approach if you had to say it out loud in front of your friend, partner, child, or parent and face his or her reactions to it. This can make it difficult to follow something potentially scary to its conclusion.
Another advantage is that the time is all yours.
You don’t have to share it with anyone. Rarely are
we in a situation where we get another person’s undivided
attention. Rarely do we even give this to ourselves.
People come to therapy for any number of reasons and often
have several concerns that they’d like to address.
In general, the reasons for seeking therapy fall into two
categories: 1) individual problems— concerns about
your own feeling, thinking behavior—and 2) problems in
relationships with others.
Individual Problems
Many people seek therapy because they just don’t feel
right. Perhaps you find yourself irritable or sad
much of the time. Maybe you feel like you repeatedly
fall short of your expectations of yourself and are never
quite satisfied with the choices you make. Perhaps
you worry about things more that you feel is useful.
Some people want to figure out something important about
their identity – for example, whether or not they are gay
or lesbian, whether their job is really what they want to
do for a living, or whether they’re on the right spiritual
or religious path. Some people may have
already decided they want to make a major shift in one of
these areas, but know that making such a shift will come
with its own challenges and want support initiating and
navigating the change.
Relationship Problems
Maybe you’ve noticed that you often find yourself in
relationships that aren’t working the way you’d like them
to or think they should. Perhaps, for example,
you’ve had difficulty keeping long-term friendships or
have never been able to sustain an intimate relationship
for more than a few months.
Or maybe you have concerns about a particular
relationship. Adult children often seek therapy for
help in resolving conflicts between themselves and their
parents or other family members. Parents often ask for
help regarding raising their children or getting along
with children who are now adults. Perhaps you want
to make amends to your grown children for some way you
hurt them when they were young, or you want to face and
resolve some painful conflicts that are impeding your
ability to have a satisfying adult-to-adult
relationship. Or perhaps you have ended a
relationship with someone and want some help to come to
terms with the loss and learn how to avoid getting into a
similar relationship in the future. These are all
concerns that we can address in individual therapy
although, in many cases, people find it very helpful to
invite those with whom they are having a conflict to join
the process or at least attend a few joint sessions so
that they can work together on the problems between them
with the help of a therapist.
Many people come to therapy because they’re in an intimate
relationship that isn’t going as well as they would
like. They may fight about things like how to
spend money, how to spend their time together, how to
raise their children, or how they communicate.
Some people want help deciding whether to stay in a
relationship, or want to learn how to make a relationship
better. If your concern is primarily about an
intimate relationship, you and I will explore whether couple
therapy or Discernment
Counseling would be helpful for you at
this time.