by Patti Desert, LCSW-C, CEMDR, CP

Click here to contact Patti and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

The word holistic has been used to describe health care practices that include acupuncture, massage therapy, Reiki, naturopathy, and homeopathy. These practices attempt to bring harmony to the physical, energetic, and/or nutritional states of individuals.

Holistic Psychotherapy also seeks to bring balance between these systems. However, as with all psychotherapy, its primary focus is the treatment of psychological and emotional pain that manifests in depression, anxiety, trauma and related disorders. It is the way in which holistic psychotherapy treats these disorders that marks its departure from conventional psychotherapy and denotes its singular effectiveness.

Generally speaking traditional psychotherapy focuses on problematic thoughts and behavior, interprets the underlining meaning of these thoughts and behavior, and then provides solutions that are practiced by clients and adjusted as circumstances warrant.
Unlike traditional psychotherapy, Holistic Psychotherapy optimally fosters growth and healing by noting the synergistic relationship between all the ways we experience ourselves and the world—thinking, feeling, doing, and sensing. Holistic practitioners then channel this knowledge through methods that support the healthy interaction between the processes of the thinking mind, the feeling body, and the emotionally laden spirit to bring growth and healing.

Holistic Psychotherapy engages methods that encourage us to talk, feel, act and sense in ways that make our experiences manageable, safe, and empowering. Holistic Psychotherapy helps us make sense out of anxious and depressed states, manage overpowering feelings, bring solutions to our problems, and teaches us how to effectively plan for our future.
Holistic psychotherapy recognizes, for example, that depression is a symptom. Depression might feel like the problem but it is really the messenger that tells us we are suffering an imbalance somewhere in self. Pain is the red light that signals us to stop. Just as you would not continue driving a car with the engine light blinking without risking breakdown so ignoring depression risks a physical and emotional breakdown.

Holistic Psychotherapy is the equivalent of preventive medicine. A holistic practitioner will asses what area or areas of self are causing distress—the mind, the body, or the emotions—and how each area is effecting the other. A holistic psychotherapist has state of the art tools and methods honed by years of practice and ongoing training to help individuals, couples, and families identify the source of depressed and anxious experiences while helping to alleviate them, and then provides guidance to develop preventive skills to protect against reoccurrence.

Holistic Psychotherapy is not eclectic psychotherapy or a bag of techniques learned once in a workshop. It is a conscious, skillful organic blending of eastern methods of healing with western healing psychotherapies that safely support you to engage all your ways of experiencing—thinking, feeling, sensing, doing—so that you relate to yourself with understanding, respect, appreciation, and joy.

Holistic Psychotherapy recognizes that you have all the answers and its function is to help you access those answers with competence, responsible action, and a felt sensation of healthy control.

©Copyright 2008 Patti Desert, LCSW-C, CEMDR, CP. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Patti and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile