Douglas Johns, LCSW
Portland, Oregon
503-252-3739
Experiential Psychotherapy
Douglas Johns, LCSW
It's common to associate
psychotherapy with intellectual activity. At first,
talk-therapy (psychotherapy) may appear mostly about
thoughts, ideas and insight. This is too limiting an
understanding, however. It can lead people to reject
psychotherapy as just overindulgent complaining. Even
worse, we may reject people as "unqualified" for
psychotherapy if they lack some subjective criteria for
insight. But when we think of psychotherapy as experiential
we take a broader view.
Insight is a type of experience. It's one of many kinds of
experiences. Love and compassion, for example, are
experiences that are under valued in our scientific culture
but no less substantial. In fact, compassion may be the
critical place to begin the pursuit of all knowledge,
whether subjective or objective. There is a deficit of
compassion, especially self-compassion, in our mechanized
culture.
When we understand psychotherapy as experiential we delve
into the subjective. Each person's experience is
subjective. Understanding someone's unique human experience
becomes the intent of psychotherapy rather than changing
someone. Just being human becomes a shared empathic
experience. Psychotherapy becomes an opportunity to
experience oneself differently through the connection of
the therapeutic relationship. Part of this new experience
is learning to just be with yourself, without judgment,
when things feel tough. This is called "staying with" or
"holding on to yourself." Insight is experienced as
something that now feels different. Change comes from the
inside as the individual appreciates her unique life.
For more information, please call me at 503-252-3739 with
any questions you have.