My philosophy (serious bias) about therapy:

• It can and should be a happy process. You should feel better after you see a therapy doc, even after the first visit.



• That probably won’t last, that’s why people keep coming back for more.



• There are reasons hope doesn’t last, generally because nothing’s changed, initially, except the way you look at things.



• If you’re in therapy, at least one other person in your family probably should be.



• Much of what a therapist has to offer should have been taught to all of us in elementary school, and ultimately will be.



• Individual therapy is wonderful and a luxury. Getting everyone else to go with the program and not sabotage it is much harder. Not 100% necessary, but it’s surely helpful.



• Woven into most psychological issues, those in our heads and our relationships, is a veritable textile of genetics, family environment, and social learning. In good therapy you address all three.

In good therapy, how we come to understand and treat one another will make all the difference and mitigate pathology—with or without medication. To feel good, probably something big has to happen, either to the “patient” or to someone else in the patient’s life.

Which is why therapists are always thinking. .. .change something. Anything. See what happens.

I’ll hold your hand (so to speak) along the way.