Psychotherapy offers an opportunity to bring the past into the present so as to ensure the future.
Some of our present beliefs and structures may have been our best or only option at a previous point in our lives; now, outside our awareness, they may impair the enjoyment of our present life and prevent us from living effectively and creatively in our personal relationships and wider society.
There is plenty of evidence that psychotherapy can make a difference. It involves a healing relationship in which client and practitioner together explore any unhelpful beliefs, understandings or ways of managing life and relationships that the client may have developed in the course of their life. By analysing the unconscious and conscious processes within such a therapeutic relationship they can profitably explore painful or difficult experiences, emotions, self-limiting beliefs, and also value and enhance the resilience, integration and effectiveness of the client.
The psychotherapeutic relationship offers a present place to increase the range of options open to us. It can also be a place for deciding what changes we want to make in how we relate to others.