Psychotherapy occurs within the relationship between you and your therapist and is devoted to your well-being and growth. Relieving your pain, reducing your symptoms, or changing your behavior or lifestyle may be parts of that goal. Therapy is about you striving to know yourself better and finding ways to solve your problems and live more happily in the world. Therapy is present and future oriented; although some forays into understanding the past may be needed and beneficial. Although therapy cannot protect you from real-life dangers, oppressive circumstances, and threats, it can assist you in evaluating and problem-solving them. Therapy cannot rescue you from danger or evil persons. It can help you learn to recognize them and to avoid them. Therapy cannot simply end your unhappy story, but it can strengthen you to compose a new story. The therapist's job is to listen carefully, to point out strengths that have been unnoticed and weaknesses that have been ignored, to look for hope when you are hopeless and danger when you are naive, to allow you to be dependent when you fear depending and to challenge you to grow up when you would love to stay little. In short, the therapist's job is to assist you to learn to meet your needs, satisfy your desires, and live more freely in this world. Happiness, "feeling better," or similar states are not necessarily the goal, although they may be appropriate byproducts.
