Therapy That Fits You
- Different people need different therapeutic approaches.
- Making the method fit you, not fitting you into the method.
Different people work differently. Some people are brain-first, and some people are body-first. Some are full of memories and associations to the past, and others are focused only on the present. Some people are scientists, some are philosophers; some are bookkeepers, others are artists, and most of us are somewhere in between.
The fact that there are parts of how you do things that cause you problems doesn’t mean you have to throw it all away and become a totally new person. We just have to figure out what your specific issues are and find the right way to solve them.
There are many ways of looking at this, and there are many possible things we can try that might help. Part of my job is to use my broad understanding of psychology, philosophy, spirituality, science, art, music, and literature to help you hone in on the idea, method, or perspective that is actually going to help you make the changes you want to make.
Emotional Health
- Mental health = Emotional health.
- Thoughts and behaviours are mostly ways of managing emotions.
- Thoughts, behaviours, and emotions often form feedback loops.
- Therapy happens where thoughts and feelings meet.
Losing control over the ability to regulate our emotions and our actions is a huge part of what makes depression so difficult, or obsessiveness, or avoidance, or codependency, or anxiety. It’s what makes substance use and addiction so frustrating. And the fear of being unable to control an overwhelming situation is a major part of trauma responses, panic attacks, and psychosis.
And so, really, when people are talking about mental health, they actually mean emotional health, and specifically: emotional self-regulation that makes you feel better, not worse.
This is the basis of my approach to psychotherapy: Our problematic habits and behaviour patterns are first and foremost ways of managing our emotions. Our “bad habits” are ways of creating experiences that make us feel good in the moment, or of preventing events that will make us feel bad in the future.
Where we often get into trouble is when our thoughts, feelings, and actions become feedback loops that we can’t seem to control. We can’t figure out where these feelings are coming from, or why our habits are so tenacious. And even if we know exactly how we want to feel or the person we want to be, getting there seems impossible because the whole thing is so complicated and confusing.
Emotional Messages
- Your emotions and thoughts are you telling yourself how you feel about things.
- Therapy is about learning to hear and understand these messages.
The first step is to simplify how we understand what our emotions are and what they do. Basically, your thoughts and feelings are messages from yourself, to yourself. They’re you telling you about the situation you are in at the moment, what you like, what you don’t like, and what you want to change.
Obviously, this is an almost absurd oversimplification, but starting off simple makes the whole process a lot easier, and much less frightening. Instead of moving mountains, we are simply learning how to interpret the emotional messages you are sending yourself, and then building the confidence to act on them.
3 Basic Steps
- Description, Identification, Implementation
- Framework, not rules.
- Cultivating curiosity and interest in yourself and how you work.
Additionally, making things simpler allows us to boil the process of therapy down into three sets of surprisingly simple questions. And it’s my experience that these questions apply to almost any emotional, psychological, or mental health issue.
Finding answers is not linear, and you will always be at different stages of the process with different aspects of your life. Most importantly, these steps are not rules you have to follow. Rather, they are a simple framework that helps us turn fear and anxiety into curiosity.
Description
- What is happening?
- What are you feeling?
- What memories and thoughts come up?
- How do you express yourself?
- How do other people react?
- How do you wish they would react?
- What do you wish you could do or say?
- What are you afraid will happen if you said it?
Identification
- What are the central problems?
- What do they stem from?
- How are you trying to help yourself?
- Is it working?
- Are there better tools you could use?
- Which ones feel like they will work for you?
- Where can you start using them?
Implementation
- How are you feeling about change things?
- What resistance are you encountering?
- Is coming it from within you, or from other people?
- How can we make things easier?
- Are things actually going the way you want them to?
- Do you like the way things are going?
- Is there something we need to change?
Adaptation
- Old patterns of feeling and thought are sticky.
- “Bad habits” and “mental illness” are often us using old patterns that don’t fit anymore.
- We can decide for ourselves what new adaptations to make and how to make them.
Another key aspect of my approach is adaptability and flexibility. As a species, we humans are incredibly adaptable. Yet, for most of us individually, without deliberate effort, our patterns and habits of feeling and thought are very slow to change, if they change at all.
And this is often where the problem lies, we’re trying to manage new, stressful experiences using old strategies that no longer fit. Maybe we haven’t noticed that things have changed. Maybe we’re not able to adapt without help. Maybe part of us is afraid of changing away from the old, safe habits we know so well. Or maybe we never developed any effective patterns in the first place.
In my experience, not only is it possible to learn new patterns, but you can also choose which patterns you want to learn. So, a big part of my approach to psychotherapy is helping you find patterns that fit and supporting you as you integrate them into your emotional and mental life.
Strength in Flexibility and Flexibility in Strength
- Emotional health = strength + flexibility.
- Both can be cultivated, it’s never too late.
Strength without flexibility makes us rigid and demanding, unable to change or compromise. Flexibility without strength makes us feel passive, helpless, and dependent.
For me, the goal of therapy is to help you find a place somewhere in the middle, where you are strong enough to assert yourself, and yet flexible enough to take life as it comes.
This is my personal definition of emotional/mental health: you feel safe enough and confident enough in yourself and in the world to both make things happen and to let things happen. And you get to decide for yourself when to do the one or the other.
Just because you “are” one way right now, that doesn’t mean you have to be that way for the rest of your life. It takes time, and it takes effort, but anyone can become both stronger and more flexible, no matter how young or old.
Further Reading
Therapeutic Modalities
If you would like to read a general description of the specific therapeutic ideas and methods that my approach is built on, feel free to have a look at the following pages:
Contact Me for a Consultation
If any of what I’ve said here resonates and you would like to have an introductory conversation, feel free to send me a note using the contact box in the sidebar on the left, or the form on my Contact Page.
Consultations are always no cost and carry no obligation to have more sessions if you feel like we’re not the right fit. If you’d like some more information about how I approach consultations and some things to think about before we speak, please have a look at my Consultations Page.