WHY GO INTO THERAPY?
Acknowledging one’s suffering, looking for help, is not a sign of weakness. It is already a strength. It is a first step (we all need to start somewhere, don’t we?). As tiny as it may seem, it’s a step on the path to recovery – sometimes just to feeling alive.
WHY SEEK HELP AND FOR WHAT SYMPTOMS?
As I’ve already mentioned, my practice is open to any issue, ranging from:
- depression
- anxiety attacks
- lack of self-confidence
- marital problems, feeling trapped in a toxic relationship
- work situations
- artist’s creativity block, etc.
I also welcome anyone who has to deal with a partner suffering from a chronic disease or an elderly parent, as is more and more the case nowadays.
Some of my patients are themselves parents facing a difficult educational issue, while others are teenagers and some are younger children. I conduct sessions either with both parents and their children or on a separate basis.
In the end, therapy, whatever its form & method, comes down to finding that very sense of feeling alive – again, or for the first time in your life. The therapist is there to help you out, however, the will to go down (and up) that path, can only come from you!
HOW DO THE SESSIONS
UNFOLD?
Sessions last 45 minutes. The patient (from the latin “one who is in pain”), or analysand (a more active word, since you are not going to be passively analyzed but an altogether active part of your therapy) either sits facing the therapist, or lays down on the couch. There’s a difference that can be important: face to face allows for a more supportive presence on behalf of the therapist, since the eye to eye contact is maintained. On the other hand, the couch allows the analysand’s mind to drift off and the analyst’s ear to go along and catch those unconscious clues otherwise harder to overhear.
The usual frequency of sessions to engage in therapy starts with once a week. That can be later adapted. Now how long does a therapy last? That’s merely impossible to answer, since it of course, depends on the issues and on the patient’s desires to deal with them. Some tensions and symptoms can be unlocked on a fairly short basis. However, one has to be careful with that, because they tend to resurface at full strength as soon as one thinks to be cured. Some of those situations are worth exploring deeper.
I charge for the first, preliminary session : even if it is a trial session, it already actively engages the person who comes to present their issues and the therapist.