Individual Therapy

Individual Therapy is what most people think about when they think “therapy”.

This, in the days of yore (1950’s, say) was the place to lay on a couch and tell the analyst the myriad ways that your mother was responsible for your life’s disappointments and the shortcomings of your own children. Very stuffy times, not a great look for therapy, also almost entirely white people and wealthy. That was so 70 years ago.

Individual Therapy still has the comfort of a relaxing atmosphere, but we generally all remain upright, sometimes there is a puppy or a bunny, and we will spend the majority of our time focused on solving problems you have now. For some people that means a trip through childhood memories, but that is not a pre-requisite.

This is your time to talk about whatever is on your mind - even if you haven’t quite figured out how to put the words to the thoughts, and you may never have learned how to even express the feelings. The brain is a remarkable organ and it is capable of storing things in a very efficient way - until it isn’t. Then, the lids come off of the boxes and those things we have been pushing to the back to deal with ‘later’ become present in our life and in our relationships with others.

Spending time understanding what it is that you want from life and why the thoughts and feelings that you have keep showing up in the patterns that they do is important to making sure that you don’t lose yourself to the many roles you occupy throughout your life. It is an essential task of adulthood to understand one’s motivations, one’s values, and to confidently determine one’s direction so that we travel not in the current of the latest trend, but towards our own, purposeful destination.