Psychotherapy and Mental Health Counseling

• Our practitioners provide counseling and psychotherapy for a variety of life issues and symptoms. We often view therapy through the lens of a person’s development. Read Therapy Through the Life Stages.
• Read about our process for bringing you on board as a client at our practice.
• We have several additional areas of focus which some of our practitioners have specialties in.
• Read what our practitioners are discussing regarding mental health and psychotherapy: Insights.
• We’ve assembled some resources and links to information we find helpful.

In the Session

Therapy first aims to make the person feel comfortable enough to be “in therapy.”  Our professional therapists will work very hard at the outset to help you feel respected as a person, as an individual, not a case, not a disorder, and not a collection of symptoms, and that your feelings, your opinions, and all your thoughts (however quirky or off-the-wall!) are important and essential to the treatment. Therapy next aims to enable a client to “pause” and begin to turn an eye inward, take a look at oneself and one’s life, not in a criticizing or judgmental way, but in a matter-of-fact kind of way.

During therapy, your therapist will be looking for patterns of when your symptoms started, when they tend to become more pronounced, how you’ve tried to address things in the past, and what your understanding of these symptoms are. We will also look for patterns more generally in your life, how you make decisions, how you relate to the important people in your life, and how you think and feel. As you and your therapist progress in the therapy, the connections you make between different events in your life, the understandings you come up with, and the new narrative you and your therapist develop to explain the previously unexplained issues in your life will become the substance, the crux of the therapy. There may be very emotional moments in your therapy where you express how strongly you feel about something going on in your life right now, how painful something is, how anxious you are; and you may also become emotional if and when you get in touch with earlier feelings towards people or events from your past that you may have blocked out or simply forgotten about, but come back to you as your psychological world becomes more hospitable to them. IPG always makes sure to have an endless supply of tissues available free of charge!

When we enable you to “get things out” and explore them, achieve important insights into yourself, your personality, your character and your past, and learn about who you are in the present, your symptoms will fall away. We will help you value yourself, be less afraid, be more hopeful, more assertive, more productive, and more accepting and loving. Symptoms tell you that something is wrong. When your therapist helps you understand and address what’s wrong, your symptoms will have achieved their purpose, and can recede. Whatever troubles remain can only then be more easily addressed through “cognitive” or “behavioral” means, which we can discuss whenever you wish.

The end of therapy is when you and your therapist feel that the issues that brought you to treatment have been resolved in a significant way. Sometimes the end result is not exactly how you thought it would be. However, as you progress in the therapy you will learn what you can reasonably expect to change and what you may not. One’s goals for therapy can also change as often as necessary, but this will be discussed from time to time to make sure you and your therapist are on the same page. Some clients choose to stay in therapy for a long time. This is actually a good thing. Such individuals do so because they view their regular sessions with their therapist as an important part of their lives, as a valuable, nourishing, rejuvenating, grounding or calming part of their week or month.

Therapy generally takes place in person, in the office, the same way every time: client on the chair or couch, therapist sitting nearby, either in view or just out of direct sight. It is called “talk therapy” since during the session, the client and therapist have a unique conversation. Over the course of therapy, sometimes even frequently, they will look at what is called the “therapeutic alliance,” or the relationship between patient and therapist: how they communicate, how they treat each other. They will try to notice the patterns of what unfolds in their conversations. They will look at what they tend to discuss, and what they tend not to. They will also keep an eye out for how well they stick to the treatment schedule.

Your Role in Therapy

So what then is your role? What is your part in therapy? What do you need to do?

First, and most importantly, you need to come to your sessions regularly, as prescribed. Therapy works best when it’s set for the same time every week. Therapy needs to become part of your regular routine; you need to be able to know in the back of your mind when “your time” is. Some clients need to come in more than once per week, particularly at the outset; some clients want to come in more than once per week. This will be discussed, if you or your therapist think you should or want to come in more frequently. You will get out of therapy what you put into it. If you take the therapy seriously and commit to working hard through the process, you will definitely see improvement and good results.

Second, talk! At IPG, we want the client to open the sessions, to pick the starting point. Most of the time, even if the session begins with a relatively benign or chatty kind of topic, it will eventually get to something psychologically important, don’t worry. Some clients choose a topic to focus on in advance of the session. This isn’t absolutely necessary, but many clients find it helpful.

Third, take what is discussed during sessions with you after the session. Let the thoughts swim around in your head; come back to what was spoken about and reflect on it. Try things out, see if what was said is true. Some clients find that jotting things down for themselves during a session helps them remember things outside the session. To that end, IPG will be happy to provide you with paper or a pen if you should forget.

Fourth, make sure to respect the therapy, both the time and consistency of the sessions, as well as the payment for the sessions. If you respect the work we do together, you will find that the therapy is much more effective. Again, the quality of your therapy experience is directly related to what you put into it.

On Medication

As with many physical illnesses, the exact cause of most mental disorders is not known. However, just as with a physical illness, where the presence of the problematic symptom is usually associated with distinct changes in one’s bodily systems (cardiovascular, endocrine, etc.), the presence of emotional distress is often associated with changes in one’s neurochemistry. Which causes which still remains a mystery. Nevertheless, emotional/behavioral problems, such as depression or anxiety, may therefore be considered both a biological as well as a psychological problem. As such, research on intervention for emotional disorders generally shows that, especially when an emotional disorder is severe, both psychiatric medication and psychotherapy is indicated.

IPG treats all clients, whether or not they are being prescribed medication. Your treatment at IPG aims to address and alleviate the psychological causes and maintaining factors of the emotional problem. We work with clients to help identify and adjust the aspects of a person’s life which contribute to the emotional problem and/or which have resulted from the person being worried by their issues. When a client’s problems are particularly severe or when they interfere with a client’s ability to attend or benefit from psychotherapy sessions, your therapist may suggest a psychiatric consultation to determine if medication could be helpful.