How Psychotherapy Can Help

Rollo May, a famous psychotherapist, once wrote that "the purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free" (Freedom & Destiny, 1981). In the best of cases, therapy helps people confront problems, the beliefs and dynamics that maintain their power, the attachments and distractions that are preventing wholeness and vitality, teaching clients new and creative ways to face and work through their problems, and, in many cases, revising destructive and debilitating beliefs about problems, about themselves, about their relationships, or about their world. Therapy is a process that stirs will and vulnerability and provides opportunities for revelation and constructive change.

What I Say to People Concerned about the Therapy Process

Painful feelings can stir in us confusion, questions, fears, resentments, or defensiveness; they often lead to impulsive, aggressive, or isolating beliefs and behaviors. As a therapist, it is my role to facilitate opportunities for working through painful feelings without being overwhelmed. When clients do become overwhelmed, it is my responsibility to slow things down, help clients face their pain, and assist clients in laying new foundations and building new structures. Therapy is intended to provide confrontation alongside nurture and affirmation so that clients continue moving forward in a journey of problem-solving and personal maturity.

My Blog Posts

• Round and Round We Go: Promoting Peace in Our Families
• 3 New Year’s Resolutions We Can’t Afford Not to Make
• The Crucial Choice Every Struggling Couple Must Make
• 7 Ways Therapists Get in the Way of Therapy
• 3 Good Reasons to Believe Couples Therapy Can Help You
• What Is the Difference Between Counseling and Therapy?
• Why Collaboration Is Essential in Mental Health Care
• Hear Me, Love Me: Explosive and Withdrawn Behavior in Kids
• Secondhand Hurt: The Impact of Domestic Violence on Children
• Parenting with Discipline: What Type of Parent Are You?
• Absent Fathers and the Implications for a Child's Well-Being
• The Dynamics of Abuse Within Families and Relationships
• Remembering Family Therapist Guru Virginia Satir (1916-1988)
• Breaking the Vicious Cycle: 5 Family Therapy Interventions
• 10 Essential Elements of Carl Whitaker’s Theory and Therapy
• Why Foster Parents Loom Large in Trauma-Informed Care
• 7 Principles for Responsive Parenting
• More Playfulness Means More Togetherness
• Navigating Impulse, Anger, and Overreaction in Relationships
• Meet the GoodTherapy.org Topic Experts: Blake Edwards
• Therapeutic Priorities in Marriage Therapy
• Three Fundamental Layers of Therapeutic Vision
• Rules of Engagement with Foster and Adoptive Children
• Protecting the Privacy of Foster Kids’ Therapy Notes
• The Teachable Moment: Becoming Emotionally Responsive in the Classroom
• Children in the Balance: Should You Rethink Your Parenting Style?
• Marriage and Family Therapy: A Hope for Real Change
• The Pink Elephant of Perception
• Being and Human Encounter in Good Therapy
• Courage, Acceptance, and Becoming a Domestic Dad
• Resolution to Change: A Slow and Steady View of Therapeutic Transformation
• Conflict with Care: Engaging the Right Way at the Right Time
• Therapeutic Play: A Tool in Nurturing Attachment