Psychotherapy has the potential to transform our lives and quite possibly society as whole. But too often it falls short of living up to this type of impact on those who are brave enough to work on themselves.
I have felt this frustration in my six or so years in different forms of therapy as a client. Too often, I did not feel that I was getting somewhere. That the effect I was receiving was any higher than the placebo effect.
I have listened to the experiences of many clients with experiences from other therapists. Many clients are left feeling like it is helping but not much. Or once or twice on a rare occasion they viscerally experience some change.
I have been reading in several books on the business of psychotherapy, that in a generation or two ago, psychotherapy lost much of its prestige and therapists are not making what they used to.
Although there are many factors to this, such as managed care and such, I have a personal feeling that psychotherapy as a whole has not lived up to its promise of leading to change effectively, efficiently, and in a deep and satisfying manner. Despite many schools of therapy, many of which have complex theories and models.
I believe that psychotherapy has a vast and rarely tapped potential to transform the lives of clients, that is just beginning to be realized.
This is why I chose so called “experiential” approaches as my base of work. I feel that these diverse schools of therapy truly focus on the change process, are more palatable to clients than the other popular approaches, and lead to happier and healthier states of being than the majority of modern humanity finds themselves.
David Bell, LCSW-C 