First of all...
I want you to be able to come in and talk as much or as little as you want to. When you feel the right amount of safety and trust, we will figure out together how to proceed, how to reach the goals you have, how to help you be the person you want to be. You will find support, privacy, and respect.
All of us want to belong. All of us fear being ultimately alone. All of us want to feel safe, cared for, and connected to others. Let me help you work on those things and see your symptoms and functioning improve.
When we face hardships, disappointments, or traumatic events, we lose the truths that guide us. We replace them with beliefs that hurt us. We look and see only failure, danger, loneliness, and no clear path out. I want to help you regain hope, find a realistic strategy, and a good path to where you want to go.
Secondly...
You will find that your experience here is different from what you will get with many other therapists.
I chose the name Personeum because, as much as I resist being put in a "School of Psychotherapy" box, I probably identify most with what is often referred to as a Person Centered approach, putting the Person in Personeum.
In many ways you may find yourself when in a therapy session here, the guest in a podcast. (no, not recorded and certainly not published - just a metaphor) As you may have noticed, a good podcasting host allows the most interesting things about the guest to come out freely and naturally, so they can be discussed, explored and understood.
Also...
Your personal background and path through life are writing a story that belongs only to you. Your sessions need to reflect that in their uniqueness and responsiveness.
My desire is, that drawing on a developed flexibility, curiosity, and range of knowledge and theory from over 20,000 sessions, with hundreds of clients, your journey will be attended to in a way that does not have to depend on stock answers from a protocol manual. I want to offer personalized advice and guidance tailored to you and as unique as your are.
Goals are important.
My skepticism regarding manualized treatment protocols does not mean that goals are unimportant. In fact, I am thinking about them, and even revising them in the background, during every interaction I have with clients.
Interesting, thing about goals, we can't completely know where we want to go until we know where we can go. Why would we fortify in ourselves a desire to go somewhere that is impossible to get to.
And...
we can't completely know where we can go until we know more about where we want to go, because getting some places take a lot of want.
Saying what we want out loud, even to ourselves, is one of the more vulnerable things we can do. When we really let ourselves know what we want, we open ourselves up for disappointment or criticism.
Treating goal setting as merely a necessary prelude to starting the actual work of therapy, or just part of the paperwork, underestimates the complicated process that goes on in therapy.
More you would like to know?
For the questions that you still have, check the FAQ's or contact us.