Talking....

Have you ever had the experience of talking out loud to someone, a friend or a family member, and suddenly realizing something new as you were saying it? This process – transformation through speech – is at the heart of psychotherapy, and is one of the key elements that allows for powerful change in therapy. Where therapy differs from simply talking with a friend or family member, however, is in the listening partner: a person who is trained to ask questions and to help you make links and discover connections that previously seemed unimportant, or did not appear at all.

In the company of a trained therapist, you can speak about whatever is on your mind without fear of judgment, evaluation, or opinion.  While it can be nice to receive feedback from someone else when we have a problem, often this feedback can steer us away from what we think is right, make us feel embarrassed or ashamed, or serve to reorient our values, decisions, and opinions to what the other person thinks.

My job is not to give you advice or my thoughts on your experience, but to encourage you to continue unfolding your own experience – perhaps more carefully and with more detail than you have ever been allowed to do before – and, through this talking and listening, to come to new understandings about your life and the meaning you make of it. Unfortunately, most of the time in life, we do not really listen to each other. We may hear the other’s words, but often do so only through a lens of our own thoughts, responses, opinions, and needs. Though it can feel strange at first, setting aside a weekly time to explore and talk about the covered over aspects of life, without evaluation or advice from your listening partner, can be quite freeing, and invites you to begin to wonder about yourself, and to engage new possibilities for old problems.