My Approach to Helping
Guiding me in my work is the belief that all people are capable and proficient. Even though we don't always feel peaceful and happy, I believe that people have inside themselves everything needed to feel peaceful and happy. In fact, experience has shown that in our natural resting state there is, deep within us, a sense of calm, compassion, curiosity, confidence, creativity, courage, and connection to others. Therapy can help people to connect to this state.
This is a far different approach from what is sometimes taught in graduate psychology programs: that people are deficient and lacking what is needed to be happy. Under this "deficient model" therapists consciously or unconsciously believe they have everything the client needs to feel better. A therapist trained under the "deficient model" may likely believe it's their job to find a way to teach, educate, or give something to their clients in order to "cure" them.
Because I believe people already have everything they need, my job is to help clients gain access to their own wisdom. The truth is, no matter how wise a therapist is, people know themselves and/or have the potential to know themselves much better than anybody else. So, rather than giving my clients all the answers (answers I don't have) and solving their problems for them (solutions I don't have), I instead work to guide clients toward discovering their own resources, solutions, answers, and wisdom. I can't solve peoples problems, but I can help people to solve their own.
The model of therapy that I use is called Internal Family Systems (IFS), which was developed by Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., LMFT, over the last 25 years. This therapy applies family systems principles and psychodynamic thinking to both the external and internal worlds of the client in a respectful and compassionate way. IFS therapy focuses on relationships: how we relate to others and how we relate to parts of ourselves. Rather than simply relieving symptoms, this therapy helps to solve the root causes.
Each patient carries his own doctor inside him....
We are at our best when we give the doctor who
resides within each patient a chance to go to work.
~Albert Schweitzer
The
Counseling Anchorage Alaska
