Intensive Therapy (ISTDP)
From the outside, you’ve got your life together — at least in terms of your professional life. You have a decent job or are doing well in school. You have a loving family and a great group of friends. You’re financially stable.
But you’re not happy. And worse yet, you’re not really sure why. You may have been to therapy before, and it did not get you the results you were hoping for. By the time you stopped, you learned some decent strategies, but you were no closer to understanding the causes of your unhappiness.
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (or ISTDP) may be for you.
The goal of ISTDP is to find the hidden cause of your discontent, and help you work through it.
At the start of therapy, many people don’t know what is getting in their way — they just know that they are unhappy, despite all the good things in life. I start with the premise that you want to get better. You want to FEEL better. I also believe that you have an innate ability to heal, but you may have lost touch with it. You are doing the best that you can, but it’s just not enough to make you happy.
Here is the good news: no matter how bad things are, there is a very healthy part of you that is pushing to get help, to tap into your inner strength and finally heal.
During sessions together,
we’ll work to identify and change patterns that were established long ago. At one time, these patterns may have helped you, but now they are holding you back. I am actively engaged in the process, rather than sitting back and simply listening to you talk.
I will encourage you to fully experience various feelings and emotions. We’re not shying away from the uncomfortable hard stuff — we’re intentionally diving in! And if it doesn’t help, or stops helping, we don’t give up — we work to understand why it’s not helping, and figure out what we need to do differently.
What changes can you expect?
People frequently report changes such as:
- A stronger feeling of connection to family and friends
- A better understanding what they are feeling
- A greater awareness of negative and self defeating patterns
- Feeling more stable in their emotional reactions
- Greatly diminished feelings of anxiety and depression
ISTDP is not the right fit for everyone. It requires work, dedication, and commitment from both client and therapist. The process can be challenging, uncomfortable, and, at times, painful. However, the benefits can be transformative.
I can help.
Therapy has been proven to be effective. Not only does study after study show this, but I know this to be true from my own first hand experience. I’ve been working for more than twenty years to help people overcome their challenges.
I’m Dr Belinda Barnett. I’ve dedicated my entire adult life to helping people going through the same challenges you are. I worked with the Veterans Administration for over eighteen years on some of the most difficult cases there are. I understand how hard things can be…
And I can help.
I am a down-to-earth person who will treat you as an equal. I do not see the therapeutic relationship as doctor-patient, but rather two people working together. I have book knowledge and clinical training, but you have the knowledge of yourself. My aim is for us to work together to help solve your problems.
The first step in that process is to contact me. Easy, right?
Photo: Jen Barker Worley
