Toni Jackson
Counselling & Psychotherapy for the Misunderstood
How to Meet Yourself In Psychotherapy
Image: The School of Life
Psychotherapy helps clients build better relationships with themselves, others and the world.
As a way to demonstrate this, I’ve put together a really lovely collection of The School of Life animations, which beautifully describe some of the numerous ways psychotherapy promotes a greater connection to self, other and the world.
How Psychotherapy Works
This first animation explains psychotherapy as having three main reasons for its effectiveness in allowing us to know ourselves better.
Firstly, psychotherapy helps our unconscious feelings become conscious.
“…ideas and feelings bubble up from the unconscious and are healed through exposure, interpretation and contextualisation….ghosts from the past are seen in daylight and are laid to rest.”
Secondly, psychotherapy allows for and explores transference. With a good therapist, you are able to play out past, hurtful relationships in a safe environment.
“Psychotherapy is a controlled experiment, which can teach us to observe what we’re up to and where our impulses come from and then adjust our behaviour in less unfortunate directions.”
Thirdly, for many people, psychotherapy provides their first good relationship. In therapy, we “get to experience someone who is reliable, listens to us, sets the right amount of boundaries and helps us feel legitimate and worthy.”
This therapeutic relationship can become the model for relationships outside of therapy.
Do I Need A Coach Or A Therapist?
So you’re struggling with something and you’ve decided you could use some support.
Do you need a coach, or a therapist and what’s the difference?
Coaches and therapists both potentially have a lot to offer and working out which is right for you depends on a number of factors.
In this article we will look at:
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- What is therapy?
- What is coaching?
- Reasons you might see a therapist
- Reasons you might see a coach
- The importance of training and qualifications
- Myths about therapy vs coaching
What Is Therapy?
When I say therapy, I am referring specifically to psychotherapy.
The Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA) defines psychotherapy as,
“Psychotherapy is the comprehensive and intentional engagement between therapist and client for the healing, growth or transformation of emotional, physical, relationship, existential and behavioural issues, or of chronic suffering, through well-founded relational processes. The aim of psychotherapy is to support increased awareness and choice, and facilitate the development, maturation, efficacy and well-being of a client.
Psychotherapy involves what is known and what may not be known in personal functioning, usually referred to as “conscious and unconscious factors”. Through a holistic perspective it encompasses the mental, emotional, behavioural, relational, existential and spiritual health of a human being.”
Psychotherapy encompasses both your desire for growth as well as supporting you through suffering. In depth psychotherapy, as with coaching, we assume you are whole, and that you are the expert on you. Read More
How Psychotherapy Can Help You See Through The BS
In a world full of surface swimmers, be a deep diver.
That emptiness you feel inside, the one you keep trying to fill with your Insta feed, food, wine, new clothes, that’s the place depth psychotherapy can help you gently explore and move through.
In 2019, life for most of us is faster, more image-based and less connected than ever before.
Sure, we have access to incredible technologies, but face-planting our phones, being constantly busy and never really stopping to check in with ourselves or others, creates a lack of connection.
Psychotherapy, particularly depth psychotherapy, is the antithesis of living on the surface of life. Read More
Toni Jackson 