Tell Me About Your Mother (Just Kidding)

Today I want to answer the question, “If I come to you for therapy, will you make me tell you about my mother?”

No… not unless you want to. I want you to have what YOU want in your therapeutic work. And that doesn’t always mean digging into your past and analyzing your relationship with your parents. In fact, there are things you can do to change your life that will never require you to think back on your history.

I like to categorize therapeutic work in three ways:

1. Crisis Intervention

The first is crisis intervention where we will address immediate, in your face concerns. This might take one, two, or three sessions to resolve. Then you’re on your way. Maybe you’ll need me again and maybe you won’t. If you feel satisfied addressing your immediate concern, you may choose to work on deeper issues or you may not.

2. Support and Relief

Next, I can provide you support and relief; give you a sort of “outlet,” or objective viewpoint. That way, as you move through what’s going on in your life, you are checking in with someone who has your best interest in mind, but no skin in the game. This can be a really helpful thing for you to do, and I’m happy to provide that kind of support and relief.

3. Deeper Issues

Lastly, there’s the “deeper issues” type of therapy. It’s a longer term therapy with the outcome of giving you a lasting sense of overall happiness and peacefulness in your life. During that kind of therapy, it’s inevitable that we will delve into your past and find out how it affects your present life. You’ll learn how you became who you are and how that plays out in your life today that doesn’t work for you.

The work of delving into the deeper issues is my favorite kind of work because I love to see people getting to live emotionally satisfying lives. I like it so much that I wrote a book about it called, Emotional Utopia, Stop Searching for Happiness and Start Living It. And it’s really that sense of feeling overall happiness that the deep work is about.