What is Therapy? Part I

All of us have our associations about what it is like being in therapy or what we think happens in a therapy room. Whether these images are from media, culture, previous therapist experiences or what we hear from family or friends, we create an idea of what therapy is. Is it worksheets or homework? Is it a therapist sitting back, listening to a patient while nodding silently and saying very little like a caricature of Freud? Is it someone telling you what to do or giving advice?

The answers to these questions depends on what the therapist believes helps people. In other words, in thinking about what helps people, I am more specifically asking, what creates change in people. Most everyone comes to me with a desire to change something about their experience in their life but can’t figure out how or even what it is they want to change.

I think most therapists would agree that we are in the business of change. How do people change when they want to change but can’t? How do I change my behavior or how I see myself or my life; how do I change my thought patterns, my relationship to my partner, to work or to family or to myself? These are the questions I am most interested in since I see my role as a therapist being how to find, create or foster agents of change.

So what is therapy? Therapy is two people fully committed and focused on helping one person(or for couples, one relationship) find the agents of change that will transform their life into what they want it to be. Or a lot of times it is me helping you find what is getting in the way of said life.

Therapy(and the therapist’s role) is creating the environment where life altering change can happen. And I truly believe therapy, or the outcome from the experience of therapy can truly change your life. I have seen this over and over and it is the reason I am a therapist, and why I believe in its’ wonders.  

Part two will explore what these mechanisms of change are and what kinds of environment induce change.