Therapy, But Make It Personal: How a Wakefield Therapist Tailors Each Session
Why One-Size-Fits-All Therapy Doesn’t Work
Seeking personalized therapy? Consider meeting with a therapist in Wakefield who values as personalized approach
Standardized therapy approaches typically fall short and it is easy to understand why. People are incredibly unique and dynamic, and failing to meet this uniqueness can make a lot of therapy simply fall flat. For the same reason that small talk can fail to truly connect people, one-size-fits-all therapy can also fail to make a meaningful connection between client and therapist to truly make a difference.
Is there a place for small talk? Certainly! It can help people get started, it can help open conversations, fill time and start opportunities for connection. Yet it’s not what goes deeper, it is rarely memorable and it is usually not very impactful.
Standardized therapy approaches can be similar, and they absolutely have their place. They can be great for teaching general information and principles, for starting a relationship and for introducing concepts. Yet without something more personal, it is unlikely to be memorable or deeply impactful.
Personalized therapy, on the other hand, takes any general principles and applies them to the unique circumstances of who you are in your life at this moment in time. It allows therapy to be responsive and adaptive as you grow and evolve and keeps the therapy memorable, engaging and relevant. It ensures change is possible.
Understanding Your Unique Needs and Challenges
As a therapist in Wakefield, a big part of my role is listening. Listening both to the immediate content yet also to the themes, the storylines and the broken threads. Listening to your voice and noticing when it is strong and when it wavers. It’s one of my favorite parts of being a therapist because I get to learn so much every session and I love learning. It is where I feel like the scientific part of my brain really comes out to play because I am constantly scanning for patterns, themes, connection, points of disconnection and more. Two people could each come into a session with me and tell me about how they felt really frustrated the past week because their boss was a jerk and they didn’t feel like they had time to do what they wanted at home. Yet, I would hear two totally different stories. One might be halting, and reveal a lot of insecurity and fear at work, with a lot of self-consciousness and shame. The other might be bold about readiness to take the next step professionally yet feeling unsure where to start and how to make time for it. The first person may need to regain a sense of capacity and readiness to assert that outwardly. The second person may need to emotionally disengage a bit at work and determine how to manage their personal time differently for a period to engage in a job search, and managing this personal time may feel very sensitive. Every person will experience circumstances differently, and I take my role seriously to ensure that my questions and explorations support you in what you need at that moment.
Standard therapy approaches might suggest analyzing thought patterns or practicing communication skills, and these might be areas I explore. Yet more of our time will be finding the nuance of your pain points and figuring out the best salve to soothe them. As a Wakefield therapist, I don’t just listen, I also connect. I connect what I hear with what I know about you, and with what I know about therapy. This allows me to consider the nuance of therapy that is most likely to make a meaningful difference for you in that moment and moving forward.
Exploring Different Therapeutic Approaches
There are dozens of therapeutic approaches and they all have their places. The primary reason that I have adopted the approaches I use most is that they are fundamentally attuned to individuality and are adaptable to any form of distress that may bring someone to therapy. The other types of therapy I use will be used on an individual basis, when they are what the situation calls for more. I choose methods to fit what you need at that time, and this is likely to change over the course of therapy, as you evolve. This flexibility keeps therapy dynamic and attuned to you, as well as interesting over time!
Setting Collaborative Goals
Your personal goals are what matter most in therapy, so your voice is what guides our treatment planning. Early sessions in therapy with me explore what your personal version of feeling better looks like, what you see yourself doing differently and what you notice yourself thinking about differently. Importantly, we will also explore why these changes matter to you. I can assure you that while everyone who meets with me wants change of some sort and is seeking relief, that relief looks really different for everyone. Some people are looking to understand themselves better, while others are looking to feel more in touch with others. The possibilities are endless and that makes therapy exciting, as there are so many ways to have changes bring about further change in your life.
Collaboration comes in when we determine how to get you toward your goals, and to help with that I will use my experiences and training to recommend different approaches to try. Will I nudge you outside of your comfort zone at times? Certainly! Yet I will always respect what feels right to you and make sure that plans feel feasible when you leave the office or sign off from a telehealth session.
Importantly, your goals get to change over the course of therapy. Often, people find that they want to work on something different than they initially thought, and that is perfectly okay! We will communicate often about how things are going and what else might be a priority.
How Sessions Adapt Over Time
One of the really fun aspects of therapy is how dynamic is can be and how much it can evolve with you as you evolve in the process. For example, someone recently started with me in order to work on what she described as her rigidity because she felt like it was negatively impacting her marriage. Over time, we recognized that what she initially though was Generalized Anxiety was actually OCD instead, so we adjusted our approaches and made changes in personal habits that led to major relief, which in turn, alleviated the marital pressure she was feeling. In the course of this, she also conceived and gave birth to a baby, during which time we addressed a lot of concerns related to her family and worked through grief of losing a really important relative to her. The transition to parenting was challenging so we were able to address postpartum anxiety and OCD that spiked, before ending therapy as she felt like all the tools and strategies in all these areas had consolidated in a way that had her ready to move forward. Importantly, she left knowing that what she had seen as a flaw in her personality, her rigidity, was much more complex and she felt much less self-blame.
Trying different strategies and meeting different phases of life in the course of therapy is important to keeping therapy sensitive to you and your life in the moment. Ongoing feedback and communication helps keep therapy fresh and attuned to you and your needs.
Making Therapy Work With Your Lifestyle
Having a therapist in Wakefield who can provide both in-person and online options can help provide an additional layer of versatility to make therapy fit into your life. While weekly, in-person therapy is really helpful to getting momentum and having consistency, therapy over telehealth from your car in a parking lot on your lunchbreak is also a great option for making therapy accessible and approachable. All I ask is that you not be driving while we meet, for your own safety 😉
Why Choose a Therapist in Wakefield Who Prioritizes Personalization
Consider meeting with a therapist in Wakefield, MA if want therapy that is highly personalized to you. Whether you are overwhelmed with a major transition in life or facing other forms of distress, you deserve therapy that is designed uniquely for you and therapy that can evolve with you over time.
Considering the example I described above, our therapy started with exploration of communication styles and anxiety-driven thinking patterns and evolved to doing exposure therapy and mind-body grounding work. Later, we explored aspects of her identity and how these were developed in adolescence and yet how she might be able to have her understanding evolve as she has gained independence from her family. We used styles of therapy adapted to processing trauma and a lot of education about OCD and how to resist thought compulsions in her postpartum period. We consolidated all of this and more as she moved on from therapy, so she has a broad and deep set of strategies on which to rely moving forward.
As a therapist in Wakefield, I am deeply committed to therapy meeting your needs. I want you to feel the value of therapy and know how it is helping you every time we meet. I want you to know that your therapy experience has been tailored to meet your needs and to trust that it will continue to be a highly personal experience as long as you need it.
Looking for therapy that’s as unique as you? A therapist in Wakefield can tailor each session to fit your goals and needs.
Whether you are entering therapy for the first time or looking to reconnect with the process, I offer a welcoming, supportive space to explore your challenges and goals.
With the flexibility of in-person and online therapy, we can find a space for therapy in your lifestyle and schedule.
Are you ready to take the next step?
Let’s connect over a free, 15-minute phone consultation for therapy in Wakefield