This is Your Life. Your Journey. Your Purpose.
F.A.Q.
Q. What is outpatient mental health therapy like?
A. Therapy is an individualized endeavor. Therapy will start with an initial therapy intake session where we will collaborate to review your life history - e.g., important relationships, developmental history, life and therapeutic goals, mental health history, and reasons for seeking out therapeutic support. From the intake session, therapeutic goals are established, and treatment will typically take place with you meeting with me once or twice a week or once every other week for fifty-three minutes.
The therapeutic relationship is established and upheld on foundations of trust, respect, empathy, compassion, integrity, deep and skilled listening, dignity of your personhood, and growth-orientation.
As a Licensed Master of Social Work, I uphold the NASW Code of Ethics in my therapeutic practice.
Q. What do I discuss in therapy sessions?
A. What you bring to therapy is unique to you, meaning you may bring your unique life experiences, wishes, dreams, conflicts, emotions, fears, grief, thoughts, and questions.
Clients I support therapeutically bring a range of thoughts and topics to sessions related to their individual goals and life.
Some common themes brought to therapy sessions include: grief, loss, and abandonment; self-esteem related concerns; wishes to pursue a different educational or career path; fears about ending or starting a relationship; desires to live differently; questions about values, identity, purpose, and relational needs; healing from parental and sibling wounds; thoughts they are not ready to discuss with others; suicidality; working through - e.g., processing, grieving, healing from, and integrating - traumatic life experiences.
Q. How do I know when I am ready to end therapy sessions?
A. You may end therapy at any time. Some clients end therapy permanently, some seek out a different outpatient mental health therapist based on their changing goals or clinical needs, and some return to me after a break as life inevitably ebbs and flow. There is no prescriptive timeframe that I provide for the length of treatment, meaning some clients may attend therapy with me for one year and others for years at a time depending on treatment and life goals. There are clinical reasons that I suggest or require termination, which I address in my practice policies available once you are scheduled for an intake session. Treatment termination is an ongoing conversation.
I always welcome direct feedback about how therapy is going for you.