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life BENEFITS
There are many benefits to psychotherapy. Increased self-worth, self-care, self-trust, and self-acceptance are what allows for greater inner peace, a more calm nervous system, and the ability to be more aligned with one's true self and soul. Although other modalities can provide support and solutions to life's challenges, psychotherapy offers its own unique contribution to health, well-being, and personal growth. Often times it is a useful or even an essential complement to medical care, body-oriented therapies, and spiritual practices. The instrument in psychotherapy is the relationship between client and therapist. Many of life's difficulties are relational in nature, meaning much of our wounding is rooted in what happened in our relationships. It makes sense that relational problems can be transformed within the context of a therapeutic relationship, where important boundaries are maintained that allow for these relational shifts to take place.
In addition, psychotherapy is much more than "talk therapy." Language is a primary tool for giving structure and meaning to what can otherwise be felt as vague impulses, perceptions, and experience. The verbalization of feelings, experience, and memory allows for greater internal regulation of feeling states and more effective engagement in the psychological work that affects all areas of functioning. One's experience once known and expressed can be integrated and transformed through dialogue. In addition, there is a wealth of current research on the brain that shows how relationship (non-verbal and verbal communication, eye contact, emotional attunement) affects brain development and neural pathways over the lifespan.
There are many life circumstances that bring people to see a therapist. The following list includes those I have experience and comfort working with:
The client's participation is just as important as the therapist's skills. Benefits can include symptom relief, increased self-worth, self-respect, and self-acceptance, increased autonomy and flexibility, improved relationships and job satisfaction, clarity of purpose and life meaning, inner peace and freedom, and greater self-awareness.