People consider therapy for many
different issues.

Perhaps a fear of flying, or anxiety or panic triggered by driving across bridges, is getting in the way of doing your job or staying in touch with family.

Perhaps a fear of school (and separating from a parent) is interfering with your child’s education (and your own sanity).

Therapy focused on specific problems like these often involves a combination of cognitive-behavioral and other interventions that address thoughts, feelings and behaviors in a step-by-step fashion.

Sometimes an unexpected event has knocked you sideways:

A death, the end of a marriage, a professional setback—you need immediate help to cope, to get through the crisis. Anxiety, anger, sadness, even depression are likely to surge in these situations. 

Regular, supportive therapy can help a person stabilize and re-regulate. Once that’s accomplished, you may decide to leave it at that. Or you may decide that it makes sense now to address some longer-term questions.

Sometimes life hits you with everything all at once, and you don’t know where to begin:

Say, for example, that . . .

  • You and your partner are fighting a lot
  • over how to handle your difficult child,
  • who could have learning problems, and
  • is getting in trouble at school,
  • and you’re getting stressed out about it—
  • especially when a friend tells you the boss has noticed that you’ve been distracted and short-tempered at work,
  • and your partner says you’re drinking too much.

An experienced, objective professional can help you sort out priorities, interrupt the cycles of escalating distress, and start healing.

Sometimes, though, a person may not know exactly why they’ve decided to seek treatment.

Some new patients come into the office for the first time almost apologetically, as if they feel guilty about taking up the time of someone who “really” needs help.

And it may well be that, as they tell me, they’re doing just fine, by “objective” standards. Most days, life seems to bump busily along with no second thoughts.

But then there’s that small voice saying, No, this isn’t it. Time is wasting. You need to make a change.

That’s a voice worth listening to. Not because every small voice is always right and you need to make some sudden, drastic upheaval whenever you hear it. But the process of becoming more aware of your thoughts, feelings, preferences, and habits—and of acknowledging any uneasiness and conflicts you may have—tends over time to lead to a better, happier, more productive life. 

Pursuing that inquiry in dialogue with a trained, sympathetic psychologist will likely make it more focused, thorough, and productive, and lead to more lasting change.

Research shows that the relationship between patient and therapist has a more profound effect on treatment outcomes than the therapist’s specific technique.

A skilled practitioner will have a variety of ways to help clients, and the judgment to know which ways will work with what issues. After many years of study and over 25 years of practice, I am more than ever convinced that a trusting relationship, and clear communication between therapist and client, are the foundations of a successful partnership in this work.