The Gift of Self-Care
If you’re reading this, it means you are putting yourself and well-being as a number one priority in your life. Your choice to engage in psychotherapy is the first, and ultimately the most, important healing factor in the therapeutic process. Psychotherapy is a very personal and valuable experience. It is a gift of caring to yourself and the people you care about. It is a prioritizing of your precious time and resources to take action in support of yourself, your health, your needs, and your dreams, whatever they may be.
Benefits Gained from Psychotherapy
The benefits you gain from psychotherapy depend, at least to some extent, on the questions you bring to it. However, below is a listing of the kinds of positive changes that you may experience as a result of your psychotherapy:
- Recover from debilitating anxiety and depression.
- Find and create more friendships, and improve existing relationships.
- Stop blame and fighting in relationships and marriages, learning to communicate in ways that get both parties needs met.
- Heal wounds created by childhood abuse or neglect.
- Stop destructive behaviors like addictions.
- Recover from trauma or PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder)
- Discover and develop hobbies, interests and passions.
- Improve work satisfaction, and work more effectively with co-workers and supervisors.
- Find or create work that is more emotionally and financially rewarding.
- Become part of supportive civic, religious or spiritual communities.
- Discover or deepen experiences of spirituality and peace in day today life.
How the Process Works
We function best when our heart, mind, spirit and body are all at peace and “on the same page”. The counseling I practice thus addresses “the whole” of your being, including your body, emotions, mind and spirit, as concerns in any one (or all) of these areas may be creating difficulties in your life. My therapeutic approach is to individually assess and address your needs in each these different areas. In addition, I focus on your existing strengths and resources and help you to develop new ones, as I believe personal resources are a critical part of both healing and flourishing in life.
Because ours is not a culture that values sensory experience, one common source of difficulty people face is connecting with the vast store of wisdom and experience that is stored in their physical bodies. One unique aspect of the body-centered psychotherapy I practice is helping you gently connect with your physical sensations and self. Developing this kind of connection provides you with a different kind of understanding of yourself and your life experience, often providing solutions to problems that could not be “figured out” with your mind alone.
Often the process of counseling I offer will involve helping you develop your capacity for mindfulness, or mindful awareness. Although there are many definitions of mindfulness, this one offered by scientist and author Daniel J. Siegel in The Mindful Brain gives a sense of it’s great value: “Mindfulness in its most general sense is about waking up from life on automatic, and being sensitive to novelty in our everyday experiences.” Mindful awareness, done with compassion and kindness, has tremendous power to transform and heal.
Where appropriate, I also incorporate Somatic Experiencing, in which I am Certified Practitioner. Somatic experiencing is a system of healing techniques designed to teach you how to allow your emotions and body to return to their naturally regulated and balanced state. To learn more about Somatic Experiencing, click here.
Karen Caffrey, LPC, JD Psychotherapy and Counseling in West Hartford, CT 06107