Approach
After exploring a range of different angles on the task of summarizing my approach—from long essays to oversimplified bulletpoints—I’ve settled on not reinventing the wheel.
This brief video from Jonathan Shedler, a deeply experienced therapist and UCSF professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, aligns well enough with the basics of my approach to psychotherapy.
If you find yourself responding positively to it, we might be a good match.
His description of the therapist’s creation of a feedback loop is, in my experience, accurate. If you’d like to learn more about what I see as informing the feedback loop, you can continue reading below.
What’s the method?
The model briefly described above gives us some ideas about what to pay attention to, what to listen for and how to listen, and what counts as meaningful “data.” In other words, the model suggests a general method.
Our work will be and feel like a warm, improvised conversation that encourages you to speak freely, spontaneously, and without fear of judgment.
While this conversation unfolds, we’ll be working on noticing the data listed here and interpreting what it tells us about your needs.
Here are some of the data that are at play in a therapeutic relationship:
Family system
Body language
Assumptions
Projections
Your history and autobiography
Narration and tone: the way you say things and the implications of your narrations.
Cognitions and metacognition
Social forces and stressors
Defenses
Repetitions
The interpersonal: how we relate
Transference and counter-transference
Affective states
Self-concept and identifications
Core beliefs and schemas
Values
Coping strategies and adaptations
Feelings: what you feel and don’t feel
Slips, dreams, and fantasies
Speech: what you say and don’t say.
Distortions
Desires
Internalized Messages