Individual Therapy
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started”. – Mark Twain
At Long Beach Therapy, we offer individual therapy to help our clients reach their goals by exploring, understanding, and managing their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. This process can be particularly beneficial for individuals experiencing psychological distress, life challenges, or wanting to improve their mental health and well-being.
Here’s how individual therapy typically works:
Establishing a Therapeutic Relationship:
The first step in therapy is building a trusting and confidential relationship between you and your therapist. This is crucial because a strong therapeutic alliance can significantly impact the effectiveness (and speed) of the therapy. If you feel that the therapist is providing you a safe and non-judgmental place to share your thoughts and experiences, you will be more likely to achieve your goals.
Working Through Issues:
In ongoing sessions, you would talk about your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. The therapist listens, provides insights, and helps you to develop new tools, techniques, and strategies to cope with challenges in your life and overcome issues that stand in your way. This might involve learning new skills, exploring different perspectives, or processing past events.
Personal Approach:
Therapy is a personal journey and can vary greatly from one person to another. The pace and specific methods used will depend on your unique needs, preferences, and circumstances. The ultimate goal is to empower you to understand yourself better, develop healthier coping mechanisms, and improve your overall quality of life.
Self-Improvement:
Therapy isn’t just for those with mental illness. People seek therapy for a wide range of reasons, including stress management, personal growth, relationship issues, grief, “feeling stuck”, and more. Therapy is a space where you can speak openly, without judgment, and work towards positive change in your life.
How Long Will Therapy Take:
The length of therapy is different for everyone – some people find benefit in just a few sessions, while others may engage in long-term therapy. The decision on how long to continue therapy is typically made jointly by you and your therapist, based on the your specific needs and goals.
Importance Of Picking The Right Therapist:
Finding the right therapist is a crucial part of the process. It’s important for individuals to feel comfortable and connected with their therapist, as this greatly influences the effectiveness of the therapy.
I often tell my clients that therapy is like solving a puzzle. The more pieces you feel comfortable showing your therapist, the better the therapist will be in helping you to solve the puzzle.
We encourage our clients to be vocal in their needs and we try to provide a safe and non-judgmental place for clients to be able to share this information with their therapist. If you want more tangible techniques of things you can actually implement to make changes in your life or if you need the support and insight to figure it out on your own, it is important to let your therapist know along the way.
If you feel that a different therapist or approach might help you better, we encourage you to share that with your therapist. Once you share this, they can adjust the therapy style they are using or help you find a therapist who you believe would be a better fit for you.
Issues:
At Long Beach Therapy, we offer individual therapy for various issues including: Depression, Anxiety, Relationship Issues, Increasing Intimacy, Coming Out Issues, Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity, Self Esteem, Trauma & PTSD, Sexual Assault, Bereavement, and more.
Therapeutic Approaches:
We use variety of techniques and approaches, depending on our client’s goals, preferences and needs, such as:
Holistic therapy, which is an approach to mental health that considers the whole person, including their physical, emotional, social, and spiritual wellbeing, rather than focusing solely on symptoms to to bring about comprehensive wellness and balance.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which focuses on changing unhelpful thinking and behavior patterns. This is an evidence-based approach which has been shown in extensive research to be an effective therapy approach.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which involves the therapist guiding you to recalling distressing memories while simultaneously directing their eye movements (or having you listen to an audio tone go back and forth between your right and left ear), with the goal of reducing the emotional impact of distressing memories over time. This is an evidence-based approach which has been shown in extensive research to be an effective therapy approach.
FLASH Therapy, which is a less intense therapy that uses similar concepts of EMDR in healing distressing memories that are causing issues in your life. FLASH therapy involves the therapist having you recall fragments of distressing memories so that issues that are too scary to focus in on for long periods of time can be addressed.
Brainspotting is a therapy technique that helps identify and heal where your specific issue is stored within your neurobiology to help you get “unstuck” from the issue and move forward in your life.
TFCBT is a therapy model based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that specifically addresses trauma. It’s designed to help you process and heal from traumatic experiences and PTSD symptoms in a safe and supportive environment.
Getting Started With Therapy At Long Beach Therapy:
If you are ready to start, please call/text us or CLICK HERE to schedule your first appointment. If you have questions about individual therapy in Long Beach (or online therapy), please call/text us at 562-310-9741.