How Psychotherapy Works

If youve read self-help books or attended support groups without success, it may be time to consider psychotherapy. Psychotherapy works because its not just about learning new skills or understanding your past. Its about being in a relationship with someone who accepts you unconditionally, without judgment.

Why is the relationship so important?
The emotional pain we suffer as adults often comes from incorrect messages we got about ourselves in childhood. These messages lead us to believe we are somehow flawed.

These flaws keep us from getting the love and respect we need. We feel ashamed of them and try to hide them. Yet there is always a part of us that wants to be loved and accepted unconditionally. The tension between feelings of shame and the desire for unconditional love manifest as problems.

• We become addicted to alcohol or drugs, food or dieting, work, sex, television. These help temporarily by providing a distraction and a way to avoid pain.
• We avoid intimacy in our relationships so that we won't be judged.
• We focus on other people's problems (co-dependency) to avoid our own.
• We take jobs we resent because the "flaws" we've worked so hard to hide, are also our biggest talents and assets.
• We worry about a thousand things, never identifying the real fear: being exposed and vulnerable.
• We develop depression and long for unconditional love and acceptance, but we believe that it will never come.

Therapy provides the most effective way to heal from shame because you begin to see yourself through the eyes of your therapist someone who is objective, yet caring and non-judgmental. Over time, you internalize this compassionate and accepting perspective and begin to treat yourself with more kindness. Ironically, it is out of this unconditional self care and respect that change can really take hold because its based in self-love rather than self-contempt.

Julie Levin is a Marriage and Family Therapist with a practice in Pleasant Hill, CA (near San Francisco). She specializes in treating anxiety and related problems including overeating, drug and alcohol abuse, over spending, clutter/hoarding, and relationship difficulties. She also offers therapy via phone and web-based video conferencing. She can be reached at 925-518-4072. For more information visit http://www.julielevin.com

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