My work as a holistic depth psychotherapist is rooted in a reverence toward the awe inspiring complexity of humans as intricate physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual beings who are constantly evolving within elaborate and interconnected webs of relationships and cultures. In deference to my recognition of our vast and contextual nature, I engage in therapy from a holistic depth perspective. This perspective allows me to embrace each individual I encounter with a keen interest in understanding her multifaceted, unfolding subjectivity and intrinsic strengths rather than reducing him to a cluster of discrete problems that need "fixing".
N Ditz
~ Mary Oliver"For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then
the butterfly rose,
weightless, in the wind."
I envision my profession as a psychotherapist in relation to its original meanings derived from the Greek and Latin. The derivation of "psyche" translates as breath, life, and soul while "therapeia" connotes service and attendance. The Greek goddess of the soul Psyche, often depicted as a butterfly, suffered many trials and tribulations on her passage to self-discovery and enlightenment. I revere "psychotherapy" as a living and breathing process of Becoming that is forever expanding and contracting, revealing and concealing. I approach my work as a sacred calling that involves providing special assistance for people during their soulful metamorphoses from the psychological dark cocoon into the light of Wholeness. This is in stark contrast to the contemporary medicalized view of the therapist's role as being one much more focused on diagnosing and eradicating the client's dysfunctional emotions and behaviors in order to promote quick symptomatic control and social adjustment.
My art as a holistic depth psychotherapist can best be described as deeply integrative. In regard to providing a more substantial and personalized care befitting the complexity and uniqueness of each human soul, I strongly believe in eclectically interweaving a diverse combination of theoretical orientations and techniques. My knowledge base as a psychotherapist is sturdily grounded in numerous aspects of both traditional and more contemporary Western psychological theory and practice that span a very broad range from psychodynamic developmental psychology and existential-humanistic perspectives, to psychoneurobiological trauma based models.
Since I practice as a holistic depth psychotherapist, I regularly utilize a rich treasure chest of experiential, expressive, mind-body and transpersonal approaches to healing and self-realization. The clients I see in my practice tend to be higher functioning individuals who already possess a degree of psychological stability but wish to go further and deeper in their journey of self-development, awareness, and personal integration. Oftentimes, we spend the first leg of their journey addressing current forms of suffering frequently related to childhood trauma such as anxiety, depression, shame. Once the individual feels less overwhelmed with present painful conflicts and emotions, we move on to even more substantive work involving transforming deeper substrates of their sense of self, consciousness, and way of being with themselves and others.
My sincere intention as a psychotherapist is both to help my fellow human beings to discover creative solutions for addressing immediate psychological problems as well as to support them in deepening and enlarging their overall personal and relational transformations. The journey of depth holistic psychotherapy, given its elaborate and wide-reaching focus on the person's entire Being-ness, is able to profoundly awaken whole winged Awareness, Aliveness, and Connected Empowerment. Several of my long time clients have described the process of their therapy as a kind of unique awakening, evolution, and rebirth. As their therapist, I can say that their transfiguration is a slow, subtle, circuitous wonder to behold. For me, each therapeutic relationship is a sacred Trek to the Core, a journey both magnificent and revolutionary. I have found no other endeavor in my life as mesmerizing and heartwarming as this : Being a psychological and soulful helpmate to such deserving and remarkable fellow human beings.