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When Solutions Become Problems

Process > Content, Part II

Process > Content

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More Than Tools

More Than Tools

The way I see it, therapy is not about teaching you tools and techniques to live your life, for the simple reason that they don't exist. Think about it: if they did, wouldn't we all know them by now? Therapists are educated not on tricks, techniques, or strategies that could be applied to everybody's life, but rather how to listen, ask, and understand the individual sitting across from them. People don't come to therapy to ask how to unclog a drain or fix a tire. For those ty

Why Talk To A Professional?

Why Talk To A Professional?

Thinking about things is like driving a car, whereas saying them is like walking. Much of the scenery is inaccessible to a person in a car—details that may seem trivial, but cannot be when your goal is to understand the land you are traveling through. The act of talking—the main activity in therapy—promotes insight in the first place simply because it slows us down, and this slowing down improves our exploration. Given that talking is important, it is also important whom you

The Last Resort

The Last Resort

Therapeutic work is characterized by a series of delicate balances. For example, your counselor should not come across as another friend of yours, but he or she should not seem like a stranger, either. Something in between is best. One of the more important balances to strike is your counselor's attitude toward your progress. On the one hand, you deserve a professional who cares about you and your progress. On the other hand (as I mentioned in my last post), this pressure to

Problems and Goals

Problems and Goals

Problems and goals are part of the common narrative of getting help. It's an easy narrative to tell, which is why it is told over and over again: figure out your problem, set a goal to resolve it, determine the steps to get there, and begin completing those steps. This sort of language plays very well when mental health workers are advertising for or talking about their work. It plays well because people are ready to hear it; the narrative is baked into our very language. We