Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind, and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstances. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit.
~ James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
Approach to Therapy & Supervision
Welcome to Mind Point Psychotherapy, PLLC! As a licensed psychotherapist and AAMFT Approved Supervisor, I integrate a process-oriented existential-humanistic approach to therapy and clinical supervision. My approach couples systemic theories with existential-humanistic psychology to consider lifespan development, identity, cultural, relational, historical, and systemic influences. I emphasize the importance of thinking critically about the values and ethics our worldview comprises - with attention to how values and ethics show relationally.
My Embrace of Innovation
We are contributors to and victims of the cultural climate of our time (Ruesch, 1961). According to Mahoney (1991), increasing numbers of individuals report novel ways of knowing and experiencing their lives, selves, and relationships as expressed through consciousness, affect, personal identity, and intentionality. What Mahoney described as an axial shift in human understanding has expanded exponentially in the last three decades. This shift has significant implications for the advancement of theory and practice. An embrace of Innovation in praxis is at the forefront of my supervision and clinical work. My intention is to encourage Innovative work as contribution to the expanding cultural climate of clinical practice.
Process-Oriented
The most important domains of human understanding and professional assistance lie not so much in the contents of personal realities as in their ongoing processes.
~Michael J. Mahoney, Human Change Processes
The starting point in a personal course of psychotherapy is always in the present (Ruesch, 1961). A process-oriented approach respectfully examines relational experience evidenced behaviorally specific to what is happening in the here and now. Typically, a process-oriented lens views what's currently happening as fodder for functional insight to what may be happening similarly in multiple areas of a client's life, what happened in the past and what can be reasonably anticipated to happen again. Hofman, Hayes and Lorscheid (2021), define process as theory-based, dynamic, progressive, contextually bound, modifiable and occurring at multi-levels.
Sequential Practice
The overarching framework and conceptual base I use for psychotherapy and clinical case consultation is based on the sequential practice of therapeutic Assessment, Goal development and Interventions (AGI). This practical approach is designed to scaffold client experience and treatment efforts in praxis. This means, therapeutic progress and case consults are focused, first and foremost, on a thorough assessment of the concerns that bring a client to therapy. A rich exploration of the presenting concern has favorable implications for therapeutic impact and, moreover, is necessary for establishing a transformative goal with the client. The client goal, likewise, has significant implications for the course of therapeutic interventions. The AGI framework can serve as a guide for conceptualizing the clinical efforts for most treatment theories.
The Art of Therapeutic Assessment
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.
~ Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person
A therapeutic assessment differs from a diagnostic assessment's aim to categorize experience. In a therapeutic assessment, the aim is to narrow a presupposed gap between the client's described and lived experience - while gathering more accurately representative and reliable assessment data.
The therapeutic assessment is focused on the presenting concern. According to Watzlawick, Weakland & Fisch (1975), in order to be solved, a problem, first of all, has to be a problem and the translation of a vaguely stated problem into concrete terms permits the crucial separation of problems from pseudo problems (p. 111). Additionally, a therapeutic assessment generates experience-anchored process-oriented functional insights for the client - maximizing the outcome gains from the assessment phase. This approach assures clients connect to, and find value in, their respective lived experience (Satir, 1988). We cannot know in which direction we need to grow, until we first know where we are (Chaleff, 2009, p.38).
Goal Development Prompts Growth Opportunities
Our wishes are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with our thoughts and actions.
~ James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
Change may be frightening for some clients—hence, the goal phase may be the most therapeutically impactful point in psychotherapy. Working to define and act on a goal may require clients to become vulnerable in a manner distinct from what's needed to share about a past or current problem. There may be a heightened vulnerability in sharing and acting on a goal than in discussing the initially reported presenting concerns. Growth requires vulnerability.
Goal development offers growth opportunities. Engaging daily activities toward a long-standing desire requires activating personal agency, congruence, ethics, hope, integrity, purpose, virtues, and vulnerability—particularly important for clients who have experienced frustrated needs, trauma, poverty, protracted marginalization, and/or perceive a foreshortened future.
Systems Thinking as Conceptual Framework
Systems thinking is best summarized as: “Attention to organization, to the relationship between parts, to the concentration on patterned rather than on linear relationships, to a consideration of events in the context in which they are occurring rather than an isolation of events from their environmental context.” (Steinglass, 1978).
The systems framework requires a conceptual shift that goes against the linear, cause and effect, explanatory quest historically and culturally rooted in scientific thinking. Asking what and how interactional questions versus individually oriented why questions are easier said than done - yet, the very practice of doing so (that is, a focus on mutual-causes interactions) is the cornerstone of systemic therapy.
Exploring, Inquiring, Narrowing & Expanding
People are anxious to improve their circumstances but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.
~James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
Ambiguities abound in everyday narratives and are resolved tacitly—without our explicit awareness —in the vast majority of cases (Mahoney, 1991). Connecting clients explicitly to their lived experience through active exploratory process contributes to favorable therapeutic outcomes for clients, more accurately representative assessments for clinicians (Gilligan & Price, 1993; Ruesch, 1961), and is key to assessing the presenting concern(s) reported for therapy by clients - particularly when clients are mystified, or their experience is befuddled by ambivalence.
We can only know in which direction to grow once we know where we are (Chaleff, 2009). Exploring, inquiring, narrowing, and expanding a client’s report, in contrast to the therapist's perception, projection, and interpretation, provides meaningful discourse on the client’s presenting concern(s) and facilitates anchoring the client's goal.
Respectfulness is critical to therapeutic inquiry - which is diminished when clients are questioned.
The Dilemma of Change
There are only two tragedies in life: not getting what you want—and getting it.
~ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windmere's Fan
A concretely definable and practically reachable goal safeguards the client against getting caught up in homeostasis and compounding/repeating rather than taking new actions (Watzlawick, Weakland & Fisch, 1974, p. 111). Once a single transformative client goal is established, there is additional therapeutic value in exploring the concerns that may keep clients from reaching their goal. Therapists who fail to explore the risks a client may face in reaching their goal, unwittingly facilitate their client's return to homeostasis - dynamic self-stabilizing processes.
Theories and Interventions
I have extensive in-depth knowledge of a wide variety of theories - including the foundational systemic theories and evidence-based approaches. I value creativity and non-conventional approaches. I will work with creative/original and uniquely integrated models in progress. As a supervisor, this means I will work with your theory of choice, not my own.
References
Chaleff, I. (2009). The courageous follower; standing up to and for our leaders (3rd ed.). Berrett-Koehler Publishers, inc.
Gilligan, S., & Price, R. (Eds.). (1983). Therapeutic conversations (1st ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.
Hofman, S., Hayes, D., & Lorscheid, D.N. (2021). Learning process-based therapy. New Harbinger Publications.
Mahoney, M.J., (1991). Human change processes. Basic Books
Ruesch, J. (1961). Therapeutic conversation. W.W. Norton & Company.
Satir, V. (1988). The new people making. Science and Behavior Books, Inc.
Steinglass, P. (1978). The conceptualization of marriage from a systems theory perspective. In Paolino T. J., McCrady B. S. (Eds.), Marriage and marital therapy: Psychoanalytic, behavioral, and systems theory perspectives (pp. 298-306). New York, NY: Brunner/Mazel Publishers.
Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J. H. & Fisch, R. (1974). Change (1st ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.