My starting point when I meet someone who wants psychotherapy is to try to listen where this person is at the moment. What is he or she expressing? What are the questions that need to find an answer? What are the dominating feelings? Often it comes down to sorrow, insufficient self-esteem or powerlessness. What are the thoughts about oneself or one’s life that prevent joy and zest for life?
Even phobias, anxiety, depression, anorexia or bulimia has a story, but it is often concealed for the person who seeks help. Sometimes it is obvious – as after sexual abuse in adulthood – one just doesn’t know how to deal with all the overwhelming feelings. Sexual abuse in child-hood might be more diffuse. Some people remember everything, others nothing, but often one doesn’t know how it has effected one’s life, one’s ability to form close relationships and trust others, for instance.
Together we make a jigsaw puzzle: I don’t have the pieces, but I can help to see where they fit in. Thus the knowledge grows about one’s own life. Together we make new experiences. The psychotherapeutic relationship is a growing relationship, where it is possible to repair the lack one is carrying inside. In the psychotherapeutic relationship it can become possible to try what might have been impossible before – for example to once more trust another human being or dare to be angry with someone. If insecurity is what one knows, it is frightening, and will require time and a secure relationship to dare to try.
During psychotherapy one will often reconsider one’s history. When one feels understood it is easier to understand others. In the end one often feels that guilt is meaningless. This is not law. What does it matter whose fault things are – really? What was is no more. We all want to live our lives with as much joy as possible. To carry all this – whether it is guilt or accusations – just prevents our own joy and development. It becomes possible to let go of the past and let new, pleasant experiences form the life one’s living at present. It becomes possible to forgive oneself and others. We only live now, never yesterday or tomorrow.
Many of us are carrying the past as a heavy burden, full of fear, mental pain or anger. We fill the future with the same expectations. It doesn’t have to be that way. But depending on who you are and what you have been through the road is different. It is not always visible from the outside. A house might look perfect on the outside but still be missing floor and inner walls, while another house looks very shabby but only needs some paint to be restored. It is the same way with us. Man is a narrative. We need to tell our story and get acknowledged to be able to free ourselves and be able to form our own story – the way we want it.
If you want to read a little bit more about psychotherapy as treatment form you can look at the web page for the office were I am working: www.allepsykoterapi.com
I also work with existential dialogues. There might be other questions one need to talk about. Maybe one is wondering about the meaning of life, or if one has chosen the right profession. Or why one is stuck in something that seems impossible to finish, professionally or private. One is thinking about divorce. The contact with the children is not satisfactory, and you don’t know why. This is not really different from psychotherapy, I make a distinction only to show that one can come to talk without having focus on psychological symptoms or suffering. Focus can be on existential or philosophical questions about life that one is trying to answer.
In both cases my starting point is that I try to tune into the person I meet. I don’t really want to give advice, I try to interpret and put together what I hear and understand about the person I meet, so he or she gets a better basis for decisions. One could say that I try to give the advice the person cannot hear that he or she is giving her or himself. My point of view is that it is very difficult to know how another person should live his or her life.
