Psychotherapy myths about therapists, clients, why people go to therapy, and the therapy itself prevent some folks from using this uniquely potent tool for crafting a better life. Don’t let fear and misinformation keep you from finding a therapist and a therapy that can help you change your life.
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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Karen L. Smith MSS LCSWKaren is the founder and director of Full Living: A Psychotherapy Practice, which provides thoughtful matches for clients seeking therapists in the Philadelphia Area. She provides analytically oriented psychotherapy, and offers education for other therapists seeking to deepen and enriching their work with object relation concepts.
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.
Projection is primitive psychological mechanism used when someone feels a feeling or has a thought that is incongruent with how they want to see themselves. When the dissonant unattractive feeling or thought surfaces, they must assign it to someone.
Selective perception is everything right now. If you find yourself too frequently overwhelmed, frightened, anxious, and negative, you may be consuming too much of the dark. There is light to be seen right now too...but you must activity turn towards it.
We all need a plan we coordinate with others about how to take care of ourselves and protect others if we become compromised by the virus. This template is to help you build a plan to keep everyone safe should you become too ill to make the plan later.
Are you over-reacting? Are you under-reacting? Taking this all seriously enough, or maybe taking it way too far? The thing is, there isn’t really any way for us to know how far is too far. But there are ways to keep grounded, which we must do.
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.