What is Psychotherapy?

Ther­apy is a vol­un­tary rela­tion­ship between peo­ple that works in part because of clearly defined rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties held by each per­son. As a client in psy­chother­apy you have cer­tain rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties that are impor­tant for you to know about because this is YOUR ther­apy. (Read my eth­i­cal com­mit­ment here.)

Sara L . Henry, MA, LMFT

The psy­cho­log­i­cal ser­vices I pro­vide include infant, child, indi­vid­ual, parent(s) & child, cou­ples and group psy­chother­apy. Psy­chother­apy is not eas­ily described in gen­eral state­ments. It varies depend­ing on the per­son­al­i­ties of the ther­a­pist and client and the par­tic­u­lar prob­lems you are expe­ri­enc­ing. There are many dif­fer­ent meth­ods I may use to deal with the prob­lems that you hope to address. Psy­chother­apy calls for an active effort on your part.

What can you expect?

In your first ses­sion I will offer you some sense of what ther­apy will entail and how I will work with you to address your con­cerns.  You should eval­u­ate this infor­ma­tion and whether you feel com­fort­able work­ing with me. You have the right to ask for the ratio­nale for any aspect of your treat­ment or to decline all or any part of your treatment.

As your ther­a­pist, I am respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing you with the high­est level of pro­fes­sional skills com­men­su­rate with my train­ing and expe­ri­ence.  I will help you work through any issue or con­cern.  I will facil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion between you and any sig­nif­i­cant per­son so that you can say what you need to say and so you can accu­rately hear what the other per­son needs to say to you. Through­out the entire process, I will encour­age, guide, chal­lenge and sup­port you to make the changes you deem to be right for you.

As the client, you are respon­si­ble for being as hon­est and open as pos­si­ble.  Change usu­ally involves let­ting go of things that are famil­iar in order that new pos­si­bil­i­ties can emerge.  Effort and risk will be required.

If I feel you can best be helped by a ther­a­peu­tic method out­side of my own scope of prac­tice, I will dis­cuss a refer­ral with you.

Ther­apy does not offer any guar­an­tees.  As we build a ther­a­peu­tic rela­tion­ship, I will offer my ser­vices to the best of my abil­ity and will expect you to put as much effort into the process as you expect to get out of it.

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