Individual therapy and Counselling

The most widespread and common treatment protocol is individual or one-to-one therapy sessions. It is through the dual relationship that the therapeutic relationship is incubated, a condition we might call “sacred”. In this process, the treated person allows himself/herself to be let go, a climate of trust is cultivated, and the exclusivity of the moment is affirmed: “This is your time and I am here exclusively for you and the needs you bring to the therapy room.” These are some of the processes that take place within the dual relationship.

From the original work of Freud, Jung, Ferenczi, Adler and the limited possibilities of access to personal therapy due to socio-economic factors, stereotypes and low educational level, we have reached the present day. In the new millennium, abundance of everything and easy access prevail. Today we are experiencing the opposite, with a plethora of therapeutic streams, which a recent count points to more than a thousand. Yalom (2002) states: “It is important for the new psychotherapist to avoid dogmatism and to understand what the important points of the various therapeutic approaches are. Although he may have to sacrifice the certainty that comes with orthodoxy, he gains something truly valuable – greater insight into the complexity and uncertainty that underlies the psychotherapy enterprise.”

However, it is observed that emotional intelligence, in the age of endless choices, has been damaged. The concept of alienation is associated with the modern man of vast cities, with their infrastructure, technological achievements and endless choices. Although in many cases he feels more alone than ever before, he does not know how to communicate this. Through counselling and psychotherapy, the individual is given the opportunity to examine, illuminate and reconcile aspects of themselves that have been left in the dark or that have developed accidentally through social norms and automatisms.

Finding personal meaning in the vastness of predetermined roles – “citizen, political being, professional, partner, parent, child, friend” – and the effort required by all these roles, individually or simultaneously, combined with the psychic material and transgenerational information that each of us carries, can bring confusion and damage to the individual. The psychotherapeutic journey can contribute to finding space in the individual’s life for meaning-making, possibly for the first time. This is achieved through a filtering of impressed, but not consciously chosen, attitudes, perceptions and behaviours that have become dysfunctional.

The interaction between thought, emotion, behaviour and physical symptoms can lead to the development of symptoms and the amplification of anxiety, sadness, distress and the inability to be present in the “here and now”. These situations can cause compulsive, addictive or self-harming behaviors, somatization, and other problems.

We all deserve the gift of change. In small or large parts of our lives, not consciously chosen but imprinted through pain or imposition, we have incorporated forms of power from the family, schools, neighborhoods and the government.