What is individual psychotherapy?
Individual psychotherapy (also known as counseling or therapy) is a collaborative process between you and your therapist to identify and address concerns, problems, and issues that have kept you from living your best life. Many people come to therapy to address current challenges as well as ongoing difficulties with relationships, performance at school or work, and/or stress management. Such problems are often difficult to face alone. Even if there is not an urgent crisis, therapy can be a powerful means of enhancing and promoting your emotional wellness and quality of life.
What are the benefits of therapy?
Therapy can help improve your mood, increase your emotional and mental well-being, learn to manage stress with healthy coping skills and strategies, and handle challenging interactions with others in your life. By working with a therapist to identify and overcome obstacles to their well-being, many people experience improvement in their interpersonal relationships and social functioning, self-esteem, and decision making, all of which can help them to feel more successful and in-control of their lives.
What can I expect in therapy?
Typically, therapy begins with an intake session so you and your therapist can get to know each other, identify presenting problems and struggles, determine the “goodness of fit” between you both, and identify the best therapeutic approaches to meet your treatment goals. Intake and therapy sessions typically run 45 to 60 minutes and involve collaborative efforts with your therapist to work toward your therapeutic goals.
Therapy with younger children may involve a parent education and training component to help transfer or generalize treatment progress and interventions from the therapy office to other settings, such as home and school. Separate parent consultation and education sessions are also available and encouraged. Therapy with adolescent clients may also involve parent education and training, although it is often important to strengthen adolescents' sense of autonomy and use of independent coping strategies as they “bridge the gap” between childhood and adulthood. If treatment goals include improving communication and problem-solving between multiple family members, our providers also offer family therapy. Your individual therapist can help you to determine whether it would be best for individual and family therapy to be conducted by the same clinician, or by separate providers.