There are several reasons why therapy may not have worked in the past:
• Lack of rapport with the therapist
• Misalignment of therapeutic approaches with your needs
• Overemphasis on venting thoughts and feelings without enough support to change
• Shallow but well-intended focus on coping skills and symptom management
• Overemphasis on appeasing you, the client, rather than supportive encouragement
• Too much time spent on analyzing other people in your life, rather than how to change your internal processes to alter your reactions to others
The primary reason therapy is ineffective is usually threefold:
• The therapist has not explicitly helped you identify and understand the internal sequence of events that led to your struggles.
• The therapist focuses too much on cognitive insights and/or past experiences, ignoring the moment-to-moment nuances that are happening within the therapeutic space.
• The therapist overlooks your subconscious resistance, neglecting a vital survival mechanism that was at once adaptive for you. If this resistance is not acknowledged, or worse, is identified by the therapist as defiance, the therapy space inadvertently reinforces the very patterns that led you to seek help.
Many clients feel mystified as to why they engage in the thoughts or behaviors that hinder them. Have you ever said to yourself:
“Why do I keep doing that? Why am I in another unhealthy relationship, job, etc? I can identify coping skills; I’m successful in so many other areas of my life, but I still engage in these patterns, like it’s automatic and instinctual.”
If you do not know the internal processes that are guiding you and do not receive live coaching in the therapy space that points out the moment-to-moment nuances of your experiences, it is very hard to transfer coping skills outside the session space. This is because the moment you are triggered, a cascade of events occurs that are outside of your awareness.
You can’t change what you are not aware of.
This is where Liberty Bell Therapy differs from most other practices. Instead of simply providing cookie-cutter coping and behavioral skills, we help clients identify the specific sequences of events that create their troublesome symptoms. By teaching clients to recognize the triggers to these sequences, they can learn how to confidently redirect the course of events and actively choose a different path. By guiding clients to attend to their moment-to-moment experiences while in session, clients learn to similarly attend to themselves outside of session.
Liberty Bell Therapy is passionate about empowering clients to independently manage their well-being and continue making positive changes even after therapy concludes. Your journey to lasting well-being starts here.
How Exactly Will Therapy Work this Time?
Perhaps you’re reading this with a sense of skepticism, wondering, “How will this therapy be any different from what I’ve tried before?” It’s a valid question, and I’d like to address it directly.
Like many therapists, I am trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), and Mindfulness. These are valuable tools, but they often do not lead to lasting change. This is where Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) comes in.
ISTDP is an evidence-based approach that helps you identify and work through the painful emotions and subconscious conflicts that are driving your symptoms. Here’s how it differs from other therapies:
1. **Focus on Emotional Experience:** While CBT and DBT primarily focus on modifying thoughts and behaviors, ISTDP centers on helping you directly experience and process deep-seated emotions within a safe therapeutic setting. Instead of simply discussing feelings, ISTDP sessions are structured to facilitate a deep connection with your emotions in a controlled and secure environment. By fully experiencing emotions like anger, sadness, and grief with support, you can meaningfully connect with them and address the root causes of your struggles. Rather than avoiding or suppressing your feelings, ISTDP allows you to confront them directly, so they no longer pose a threat to your well-being. This process fosters greater understanding and promotes lasting change that is both empowering and compassionate.
2. **Exploration of the Subconscious:** ISTDP helps you identify and resolve subconscious emotional conflicts so that you can make conscious choices and feel empowered. The dynamic forces within the subconscious have a strong influence on our thoughts, feelings and behaviors. By bringing them into awareness, you can confront and resolve internal conflicts that create your psychological distress. ISTDP aims to remove subconscious barriers that prevent individuals from experiencing true freedom and fulfillment. Until we recognize the subconscious forces that influence our behavior, we cannot truly make independent choices. Only by bringing these dynamics into our conscious awareness can we live the life we desire.
3. **Unconscious Physical Pathways:** The body plays a significant role in ISTDP, as physical sensations are linked to emotional experiences. ISTDP practitioners categorize anxiety into different physical manifestations, such as muscle tension, difficulty thinking, or migraines. Interventions are then tailored accordingly. By exploring these bodily sensations, you can gain awareness of your emotions, leading to a greater understanding of the underlying issues causing distress, as well as any subconscious defense mechanisms that are blocking your awareness of painful feelings. ISTDP emphasis the importance of addressing both the emotional and somatic experiences in therapy.
4. **Focus on Attachment Trauma:** ISTDP is particularly effective for addressing unresolved childhood attachment issues and their impact on your present life. Unlike traditional psychodynamic approaches, ISTDP focuses on how attachment issues impact a person in the present moment, rather than an emphasis on the past, allowing you to actively change in the now. Disruptions in early attachments often lead to complex emotional struggles as adults that impact are relationships in the present. ISTDP can help you face and resolve these complex feelings so that you can experience forgiveness and have healthy relationships today.
5. **Active Therapist Role:** An ISTDP therapist takes an active role, offering immediate feedback and helping you stay emotionally connected throughout the process. The ISTDP approach is structured and utilizes specific techniques designed to bypass subconscious processes, allowing you to quickly become aware of and resolve core emotional conflicts.
Because of its depth and intensity, ISTDP is especially helpful for those who feel stuck despite previous therapy attempts. The process is challenging, but highly effective for persistent emotional and relational difficulties. ISTDP is strongly supported by clinical research studies and is particularly helpful in resolving anxiety, depression, personality disorders, self-defeating behaviors, chronic physical ailments that are unresponsive to traditional medicine, and childhood trauma.