You can get un-stuck. Together we'll figure it out.
David Dean Schwartz, L.S.W.
"There's nothing wrong-with-you that what's right-with-you can't fix."
A friend and mentor once gave me a cartoon from The New Yorker magazine. It showed a doctor looking at an X-Ray, and telling his concerned patient, "There's nothing wrong-with-you that what's right-with-you can't fix."
That's a nice way to sum up what social workers call a "strengths-based" approach. It means that I'm NOT going to give you a test, tell you all the things that are wrong with you, and then fix you to my own specifications.
Just the fact that you're reading this page proves that you've got some pretty important skills. You know how to investigate your options, and to at least consider whether or not psychotherapy is for you. As you read, you're comparing what you want with what I offer. Those are important skills. In fact, it is by looking at all the skills you bring to the table that we will find ways to change the parts of your life in which you feel stuck.
Most of our skills, we learned when we were young. As kids, we learned to use certain coping strategies because they worked for us. If the adults in our lives didn't do a good job caring for us, we felt overwhelmed and terrified. After all, we were just little kids. When we finally figured out a strategy for feeling OK, we hung onto it for dear life--even if there were some less-than-pleasant side-effects. Back then, that made perfect sense, but as adults we have tons of new options. The problem is, giving up our old patterns feels as dangerous now as it did then. We hang onto old ways of coping, and we feel stuck.
