My soul has grown deep, like a river.
–Langston Hughes
What is Psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is individual and family treatment for improving mental and emotional health. Its aim is to gain an understanding of human desires, vulnerabilities, and capacities in the face of life as it is, and to use that knowledge to help clients overcome symptoms and barriers to well being. Through a relationship in psychotherapy, clients gain perspectives and methods for resolving emotional pain and problems. Whether you are suffering from loss or trauma in your past or present, or even if you don’t know the cause of painful symptoms, a professional therapist can support you in resolving complex issues and opening to a deeper sense of well being and personal empowerment.
What is Marriage and Family Therapy?
A Marriage and Family Therapist is a psychotherapist who focuses on relationship. Most of our trauma is interpersonal. As such, it affects our relationships especially. A Marriage and Family Therapist sees symptoms as shared and a couple or family as a self-regulating system. As we resolve relational trauma, we uncover a greater capacity to be in relationship as ourselves instead of as ongoing reactivity to formative trauma and loss.
What is Depth Psychotherapy?
Depth Psychotherapy looks at the relationship between conscious and unconscious dynamics. It includes seeing through thoughts and images, dreams and symptoms to the broader narrative of a person’s life and the deeper narrative of the collective psyche. The therapist regards the client’s symptoms, experiences, and desire for change as connected with psychic patterns and complexes that are personal and impersonal. The psyche’s archetypal patterns of reaction to trauma and loss may be transformed in the life of the individual as part of a broad psychic movement toward healing and transformation.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based therapy that is proven to be effective in treating psychological problems. The theory behind CBT is that how a person thinks (cognition) impacts how they feel and what they do. A person can make changes in any one of those domains to impact the others. Everyone has automatic thoughts that pop into their heads, and people often make errors in the way that they think. Developing awareness of automatic thoughts and patterns in thinking will then allow the client and therapist to examine whether the thoughts are truly accurate and if they are helpful. The therapist will then help the client develop new patterns in thinking that are both true and accurate. In addition to focusing on thoughts, CBT also focuses on helping the client make changes in their behavior, for example, improving interpersonal relationships through communication skills; using behavioral activation to improve the balance between productive, pleasant, and self-care activities; and moving from impulsive reaction to carefully considered action.