People come to psychotherapy in different ways. Sometimes, friends or family might suggest it while others find the desire within themselves. Often, for reasons we cannot understand, we get in our own way. It might seem that the limiting or oppressive forces are always in the outside world (e.g. “All the men/women I seem to date are losers,” or “Making friends in Los Angeles is impossible.”) On some level, though, we may know that not all the problems exist on the outside. Even before you enter therapy, you may recognize some patterns in yourself, what makes you anxious or sad and how you behave when you feel that way. Do you withdraw? Do you become a different person that you believe would be more pleasing? How much does your own self-doubt influence your behavior?

These ways of being often go unquestioned. They can negatively impact small areas  in one’s life or they can surface in almost all areas leading to seriously unhealthy symptoms including chronic anxiety or depression, addictions, obsessive-compulsive dynamics, paranoid thinking and even contemplating suicide. Work, friends and romantic involvements may all become affected. We may hold onto secrets or experience ourselves with shame and embarrassment, which is often broken through early in individual therapy. As the work continues, I can help you identify and understand how you receive, process, and react to people and events in your environment. You will gain insight into how and why these ways came into being. What may have once been adaptations to traumatic experiences my now be ways that just narrow our world. Both through insights uncovered in the therapy and through the new reparative relationship we develop, you will discover more flexibility in terms of how to perceive what life throws your way and how to react to it. You will also find the opportunity to develop and practice new ways of being that you will be able to take out into the world with you.