Psychotherapy costs a lot. If paying full fee for for weekly outpatient therapy, it is usually one of our most significant monthly bills. It begs the question of what makes it worth it, and why therapists deserve to get paid such a high hourly rate.
Some folks fear they are going to be asked to hate their parents by their therapist. In a world where we agree it is good to move on, let go of the past, and live in the present, it can seem contradictory that therapists as interested in our childhood.
But to move on first requires that we understand our injuries and suffering. We need to access what we did and didn’t get in childhood. The goal is not because parents are to blame, but simply to understand our experience.
Smith is an analytically oriented psychotherapist with 25 years in practice. She is additionally the Founder/Director of Full Living: A Psychotherapy Practice, which specializes in matching clients with seasoned clinicians in the Greater Philadelphia Area.
If you are interested in therapy and live in Philadelphia or the Greater Philadelphia Area, please let Full Living: A Psychotherapy Practice match you with a skilled, experienced psychotherapist based on your needs and issues as well as your and own therapists' personalities and styles. All of our therapists are available for telehealth conferencing by phone or video in response to our current need for social distancing.
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Psychotherapy costs a lot. If paying full fee for for weekly outpatient therapy, it is usually one of our most significant monthly bills. It begs the question of what makes it worth it, and why therapists deserve to get paid such a high hourly rate.
The confusion evidenced by this question is the view of psychotherapy itself. It assumes therapy is for crazy people, or at a minimum people who are not well. Psychotherapy is a tool for crafting the person we want to be and the life we want to live.
Therapists aren't just really good listeners, or solid shoulders to cry on. We aren't sages with wise advise when you are gathering opinions from folks around you. What we bring to our work is expertise in how the unconscious communicates.
It is Freud's Birthday and most Americans, even psychotherapists, see him as a joke. These same therapists routinely rely on his concepts like denial, repression, displacement, unconscious, super-ego and the like. Face it: we are ill informed.
Psychotherapy exists in the realm of the symbolic. The target of change is not the drama of the week. Therapists are not sounding boards or shoulders to cry on. We offer those things, but we have significantly more sophisticated tools to offer clients.
Psychotherapy is not meant to be limited to addressing external, concrete dilemmas of the week. The realm of psychotherapy is the resolution of central, ongoing, internal conflicts.