Therapy can be short term, crisis intervention, designed to get you through a difficult situation in your life, or longer a term transformational process designed to break old habits and help you make more satisfying choices for your life.

Therapy is a way of healing emotional wounds usually caused by childhood trauma. Most of us have these wounds because there is no such thing as perfect parenting. Even with great parenting life often brings difficulties that even the best parenting cannot protect us from.

How Therapy Begins

People usually enter therapy in crisis. They turn to therapy when pain, fear, despair and helplessness become so painful that they recognize that they need professional help. Usually we are desperate by the time we seek therapy. We all prefer to think that we can do it alone, or figure it out, or seek the advice of friends. Actually this desperation and the anxiety we feel can work to our advantage. It gives us the drive and the courage to confront our feelings and look at what is working and what is not working in our lives.

Anxiety is a very useful tool. It is a signal that something inside us wants to be known. It is a symptom, like a fever, that tells us something is happening inside that doesn’t feel good. It is one of the body’s emergency signals. Anxiety can be really useful if you can be gentle and curious about it without being overwhelmed.

Whether you come to therapy for a tune up or an overhaul, therapy usually begins with a crisis, a time in life when something comes up that causes anxiety or depression. In therapy we will explore together the factors that are making this time so difficult for you. We will look for action steps you can take to change the situation so that it is more suited to your true nature. Usually, anxiety and depression subside considerably within the first six to eight sessions. Most people feel a rapid lessening of anxiety when they get started with therapy, because deep inside they know that they are doing something constructive for their mental health.

After this initial phase of therapy, usually lasting six to eight weeks, we will evaluate your situation, and discuss your needs in the light of the progress you have already made. If you decide you want to continue therapy we will explore your goals for the longer term, and what you feel needs to change in your life. We will discuss self care and mental health tools you can use on your own, such as Fast Track Meditation which you can learn as we continue our work together.
 
Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy

Research shows that people who learn to look inside to find out what’s right for them tend to be more successful in therapy. Focusing was developed by Eugene Gendlin, Ph.D., as a way of training people to make the most of their therapy experience. I have been teaching Focusing at conferences and workshops and writing about Focusing for over 20 years. I am a Certifying Coordinator of the International Focusing Network.

Focusing is a revolutionary way of bringing together the body knowing and the brain knowing for a truly advanced healing method. It teaches a way of working with feelings as they come into awareness from body sensing. 

Focusing is a skill that you can learn which will speed your progress in therapy and eventually enable you to work through issues as they arise without a therapist. It is based in the Client Centered way of thinking in that it honors the unique experience of each person. Focusing teaches you to find an inner knowing that will become your guide in making decisions. Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy (FOT) is an advanced and natural integration of the Focusing process into the therapy session. With FOT I will track your feeling process through the session so that you can more easily come to recognize your own inner truth.

EMDR

When it is indicated I use EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing in working with trauma that you may be carrying. It works in the brain to rapidly reprocess and discharge old stored traumatic memories. It is a form of accelerated information processing that works very well when it is integrated with individual psychotherapy.

The Three Stages of Therapy

If you decide to continue after the initial stage of therapy to work on longer term goals, you will naturally progress into a phase of rapid learning and growth that will probably last several months. This is followed by a longer middle stage of consolidation and gradual working through of issues. You may not realize it, but during this consolidation phase you are establishing habits of self care and healing, through the consistency of the therapeutic relationship. Gradually you will develop a sense of safety and confidence in your own abilities to guide your life.

In the final termination phase of therapy, things in your life seem to come together rapidly, and you come to a feeling of satisfaction and increased peace. Decisions are made, and you may embark upon new ventures, or start new relationships. When this stage is reached it will seem clear to both of us that you have completed an important piece of work. Then there is a time for saying goodbye and letting go, at least for now. You may or may not return to work further with me at a later time in your life. Maybe a time will come when you will seek help from another therapist. But for now you feel that you can fly on your own, and you no longer need weekly sessions. I usually recommend a gradual termination process.

The nature of the Self has often been compared to an onion. The Self has many layers. Together in therapy we peel off a layer, bringing it out into the light of understanding, awareness and compassion. Then amazingly, there’s another layer! Over time we see the seemingly infinite nature of your inner self. You will come to face each newly revealed truth about yourself with more and more appreciation, valuing understanding of your motivations and needs. As you continue exploring yourself you will be strengthened by finding that there is nothing so terrible inside, and by cultivating a compassionate attitude toward yourself you will find that the journey of self discovery will be a rich and rewarding path through your life.

You won’t continue seeing me or any other therapist forever. You can grow into being your own therapist over time, and with the help of mental health tools which you will learn in therapy. The most powerful of these tools is meditation practice.

Lucinda Gray Ph.D.
Offices in
Playa Del Rey, California 90293
310-827-4241
Lucinda@DrLucindaGray.com