THE PROCESS

The image of karri forest near Pemberton, Western Australia, symbolizes for me what I have come to understand happens in psychotherapy.


The path into the forest represents the process. As with the forest, within you there is depth, richness, beauty, experiences of great majesty and power, abundant life and growth, and quite unexpected riches, spirituality and mystery. In psychotherapy we go in to find this richness and know this mystery and come out on the other side with more resources and greater inner strength.

Yes, there are fearsome experiences too – not least, a danger of getting lost and of being frightened off by the pain you may have stored away within you. To follow your path into the depths of your forest requires courage, determination, preparation and a competent guide. The psychotherapist can be such a guide. The path will test you, but it is also a gentle process of challenge and self-extension. Like any other process of growth and development, it is not without pain - but it has unique rewards as well.

The end result of psychotherapy is not a life without pain, or a permanently happy state. No matter how much psychotherapy we undertake we cannot insure against Life – after all Life is unpredictable and Life hurts. What you can attain is clarity and understanding. The suffering caused by hanging on to old, destructive and inefficient patterns of behaviour can be relieved, leaving you free to choose healthier and more productive, satisfying ways of living. You can gain skills and tools to enable you to take on the rest of your life path with more confidence and hope. And the greatest achievement of all - you can attain greater acceptance and knowledge of who you are and live out your potentials as a human being more fully.

Psychotherapy or counselling is an invitation to examine (not to dwell on or mope over), to consider, who you are and where you have come from and where you are going. Above all it is an invitation towards a positive change in you and in your way of living. Any change requires courage and a willingness to face the unknown. The first step is the hardest. Browsing may be the first step.