Fears about the future mirror what happened in the past and live on as a burden in the present
Alicia Lieberman & Patricia Van Horn
In my experience people tend to seek therapy after they have been suffering for a while. For this reason, I take their concerns very seriously, I want to clearly understand their problems and make them feel that I hear their sufferance as well as their hopes for a better future.
In my approach to therapy the main first step is to help my patients build trust in our relationship or understand what might be interfering with their capacity to do so.
I help my patients develop a curiosity about their mind and its coping mechanisms, why they may have adopted them to begin with, why some may no longer work, and learn how to modify them or build new ones.
I invite patients to observe the relationship that unfolds between us as a window into problematic relationship dynamics in their lives.
Once patients gain a greater understanding of their coping mechanisms and of their unhealthy relationship dynamics, actions, emotions and thoughts, that used to cause stress and seemed confusing, begin to become comprehensible. Slowly, they learn to understand themselves and others better, begin to build a more coherent narrative of their life, and foresee a path to a better future.