THE THERAPY
THE THERAPY
We are mental health professionals who understand that our mandate is to help individuals, couples, and families identify their personal problems, find solutions or ways of coping, and thereby learn to enter into deeper relationship with others and God as well as with themselves. Our task is to understand clients within their context, to listen empathically, to establish specific goals to move toward, to support and encourage them, to provide feedback and challenge them, to motivate them to make important changes in the ways they think, feel and act, and to help them make choices and take responsibility for the results. To elaborate further, the goal of therapy is to foster healing of personal lives and relationships. The process might involve an exploration of the past and personal memories in order to determine bow the present and future are being affected. It might include teaching interpersonal and communication skills, vocational guidance or dream work. A discussion of spiritual matters and the religious meaning of personal problems and possible solutions can also foster the desired healing.
The process of therapy usually begins with an initial session at the end of which all parties involved agree to meet again or terminate. Clients might choose to seek another mental health professional or we might refer a client to a colleague or to another professional if we determine that the problems identified are outside our areas of expertise. If all parties agree to continue, then they usually contract to meet another four to six sessions in order to further explore problems and their solutions. At the conclusion of this contract the client and therapist evaluate what has been accomplished and make decisions about whether to proceed, and if so, for how long. Therapy is goal-focused, though not necessarily short-term.
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