It is my belief that if you were to live long enough, you would naturally and without help from anyone else, heal from your childhood traumas, work through your psychological issues and eventually acheive inner harmony and general satisfaction with your life.

   From that perspective, psychotherapy is certainly nothing you need but it can be a regularly scheduled opportunity for you to be intimate with yourself and hopefully shorten your psyche's journey toward healing.

   A lot of psychotherapy is not about logic but about a part of your brain that is sometimes called the "subconscious." Generally, if logic and thinking could come up with better solutions (given all the circumstances) for the issues and problems in your life, your brain (since it really is a perfectly good brain) would already have done so. Your Thinking Mind cares about you and has done for you what it can. A reason to come to psychotherapy is not because someone else such as myself knows the answers, but because it is within your connection to your inner and probably conscious-in-a-different-way self that your solutions lie.

   During our sessions I will generally invite you into the "here and now," even if you are exploring the past or the future. For example, instead of asking you to tell me what happened yesterday, I may suggest you tell the events of yesterday as if they are happening right now.

   I often suggest activities that, at first, might seem a bit odd. For example, I might suggest that you allow a particular object to be a symbol for something else. "Pick out something in the room to represent your frustration," I might say. Or I might pull up an empty chair and ask you to imagine someone is sitting in it. I might even ask you to move around the room, draw a picture, or make up a story. These are ways I invite you to engage your non-intellectual mind.

   For most people, effective psychotherapy requires a shift in lifestyle and involves a commitment to be curious about and connected with your internal-Self. I often suggest a person observe himself like a scientist or detective might. Be curious. Find yourself fascinating. Notice everything. The goal is to become more comfortable with and less embarrassed about your own complex mix of responses. Expect to experience a wide range of emotions both in and out of session. Sadness, grief, depression, fear, anxiety, anger, annoyance, hate, guilt, shame, embarassment, sexuality, desire, love, and joy are all part of the normal human experience.

   As your psyche heals, you will find that you are able to make new, less limiting decisions about yourself. You cannot change what happened to you in the past or what other people did. But you can change what your inner-self decided as a result of those experiences. That, in turn, will affect many of your automatic responses to the experiences of today. You will move away from shame and the need for external validation. You will have more choices. You will feel better. You will be able to maintain more satisfying personal and professional relationships.

   For me, "expansion" is a better word than "change" to describe the goal of psychotherapy. I don't believe you need to "get fixed," but rather to give yourself permission to move toward wholeness and to connect, not with a different you but with more of who you already are. To that end I will be encouraging you to introspect, to trust yourself completely, to pay attention, to take responsibility, and to connect fully with your experience in the moment, right here, right now.

Carol Nichols Hadlock 1989

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