Whether it is your first time to psychotherapy or you are looking to find another therapist, it is important to consider a few things. Yes, they need to be a licensed psychologist, licensed marriage and family therapist or licensed clinical social worker. But the main consideration is, do you like them as a person, do you feel more relaxed or hopeful after you see them? Do you feel safe from judgement as you share various aspects of your life?
The training a psychotherapist has undergone is important but the feeling you have with them is even more important.
Psychotherapy definition: Healing of the psyche.
The origin of psyche: via Latin from Greek psukhē ‘breath, life, soul’.
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/psyche
Psychotherapy has evolved over the years to provide the following:
a healing of emotional struggle
- healing confusion about past relationships
- understanding how to live well with our present culture
- provide ways to navigate present relationships and not do harm
- to live life with some sense of meaning
- to accomplish a reasonable sense of happiness and appreciation
- a way to experience quality in intimate relationships with family and friends
- a teaching of how to suffer when the time comes; such as in loss and trauma from the past or in the present.
A healing of: ‘breath, life, soul’. This is why it is important to find a psychotherapist that feels right for you, because psychotherapy is not just about getting rid of feelings we don’t like but an evolution of our personality.
The magazine, Psychology Today has a good source for finding a psychotherapist in your area. Psychology Today therapists give you a picture and a little bio on their approach and attitude about psychotherapy. It can give you a feel for who each person is before meeting them. That way you might narrow down your search for two or three you’d like to meet before entering into a regular schedule of sessions.
There are many types of psychotherapy and many will claim they are the best. The most important is in finding a psychotherapist you like and feel that you can trust, until you don’t, until it is time to move on. It may be time to take a break from psychotherapy or to find another therapist that suits your newly discovered need; such as, a need to go deeper, marriage therapist, or a women’s or men’s group, etc.
So, I would define psychotherapy as a process of discovery with a psychotherapist who understands the relationship of symptoms such as anxiety and depression to unconscious confusion and unconscious potential. When negative feelings and memories get repressed, so does the good stuff; such as, wisdom, empathy, and the ability to connect to oneself and to others in a meaningful way.
