why go to psychotherapy?
People often reach a decision to begin psychotherapy because they feel that they have struggling with or are fighting against or trying to ignore altogether some personal behavioral or emotional difficulty and have reached a point where they want this to change.
Sometimes people reach this point because this problem has begun to affect other parts of their physical or emotional life, their thought patterns, their relationships, or their work. Often consequences due to these behavioral and emotional struggles that have begun add up, and this leads to a point where a change is needed. Sometimes others: loved ones, doctors, employers have mentioned the issue and recommended that a change could be important. Perhaps the problem has reached the point where aggression, self-destructive or violent behavior has been involved and there may be legal implications. Often these are very personal matters that a person, a couple or family has been trying to deal with, manage, control, contain or stop altogether. Maybe at times they have been successful. Sometimes the problems begin again. When this happens, the matter becomes frustrating and person can begin to feel helpless.
At times, people may not be able to even understand why loved ones, doctors, or employers “see” these as difficulties, when they themselves are not troubled by them. Is is a part of “who they are”, their personality, and they have always been this way. In short, there are multiple reasons why psychotherapy could be helpful to go, and the reasons are usually complex, sometimes delicate, and not uncommonly, there may even be a sense of embarrassment, awkwardness or even shame associated with what is the result of a long and involved decision.
do i “need” psychotherapy?
The best way to answer this question is maybe.
The matter of the “need” for psychotherapy raises important thoughts, feelings and even worries. As noted above, when people reach the decision to begin psychotherapy they have reached a point where they want something to change. With this decision often comes awareness that things in life have exceeded their “control.” Working with a psychotherapist to attempt to consider control over particular thoughts, feelings, and behaviors may involve a process of “giving up” a degree of control or increasing control to a degree. This matter is usually complicated, but when explored in the context of a psychotherapeutic relationship, people typically begin to feel a degree of relief that someone else understands them and appreciates how much they may have been suffering and struggling.
When a person reaches the point in their life where he or she has decided to invest their time in a process of change, this is a decision Dr. Geysen treats with respect and dignity.