The Process – What Actually Happens?

What is psychotherapy like? What actually happens?

Human beings are infinitely variable and so each person’s experience of psychotherapy is unique, but most do tend to follow a certain pattern.

Step 1 – Feeling Safe

We need to establish a relationship in which you feel safe, able to look more calmly at your difficulties and disclose uncomfortable and difficult things.

Step 2 – Dealing With The Presenting Problem

You very probably came to me with a specific problem – panic attacks, anxiety, depression… Our first priority once you feel safe is to find a way or ways of dealing with that. That may not mean making the symptoms go away altogether, but making them manageable. For instance, if you suffer from disabling panic attacks my first step might be to teach you techniques to manage them. You still have them, but they don’t prevent you from getting on with what you need to do in your life, or talking about what you need to talk about in the session.

Step 3 – Exploring

Once the presenting problem is under control, then things become interesting. We can start to move beyond questions of “how” to questions of “what” and “why”

  • Who am I, really?
  • What really matters to me?
  • What was I put on earth to do?
  • What was my psychological problem trying to tell me?
  • Who would I be if it weren’t for who I think I am?The ultimate promise here is for you to understand your own uniqueness. To realise who and what you are that goes beyond your family background, the plans that others made for you and the social milieu in which you grew up. To be able to assert your uniqueness and use it to do something useful for yourself and the world.

Step 4 – Making Changes In The World

At this point the inner transformation begins to generate external change. Patients of mine have changed jobs and careers, moved from one country to another, ended unsatisfactory relationships, met new partners and started families.

This process never ends for as long as you are alive, but psychotherapy can compress what would otherwise take years or even decades into months.