Counselling and Psychotherapy

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Psychotherapy is a dynamic process that provides great explanations to understanding and changing human behavior. Personality development begins during the first years of life. This means that children who are born into warm and empathic environments comprised of healthy caregivers, will in most cases, grow into healthy adults. If this nurturing doesn’t exist in one’s early environment, personality disorders can develop.
Psychotherapy offers a therapist and their client an alte
ative understanding of defense and resistance as these arise in therapy. It explains some of the derailments in personality development. These derailments usually occur because of trauma, parental neglect or abuse. Consequently, some individuals cling to self defeating or self destructive thoughts and behavior even though they are engaged in treatment for these difficulties.
Over the course of the therapeutic endeavor, there are many types of defenses that people often use to protect past hurts or pain. This resistance to feeling the pain or hurt it can be attributed to: fear of rejection; fear of coming into contact with trauma or pain itself; or fear of exposing the humiliation of a past event.
Digging deeply enough to come into contact with one’s past hurts is an extremely difficult process. The client and therapist must break the walls or defenses down in order to get at the pain. In order to do this, the therapist must provide a safe environment and facilitate the development of trust. This feeling of safety and trust is absolutely necessary in order for the client to be able to overcome the resistance to feeling or dealing with the trauma or pain. It is also important for the therapist to explain and help the client understand the benefits of acknowledging and growing through their past hurts. It is kind of like telling your client to stick their finger in the fire, and though it may hurt at first, the pain will eventually go away and you’ll feel better than ever.
Psychotherapy allows people to deal wit the past in order to change the present. Many people have had to survive through traumatic or painful times in their lives and could not allow themselves to feel the pain at the time, or didn’t know how to deal with the pain or trauma on their own. These unhealed trauma’s can have a dramatic impact on this person’s adult life. The walls or barriers these people have erected in order to survive in the past, no longer serve the same purpose and are actually harmful to their present situation. In treating such cases, psychotherapy can be invaluable.
In most cases, these defenses were formed during childhood. Consequently, we stopped maturing and learning new ways to cope with situations. In a lot of cases these defense mechanisms held people at a distance. There were breaches of trust in childhood, consequently many people stop trusting all others and began to view people as inherently out to harm them. How can these traumatized people have intimacy or close relations with their wives, husbands or children? The truth is, without help, they can’t. Psychotherapy allows the therapist and the individual to be able to deal with the past in order to re-gain a feeling of safety and self esteem. Once a person’s self esteem and ability to trust is restored, they are then able to begin establishing healthy relationships and work towards reaching their goals in life. This restoration process is the reason psychotherapy is needed.

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