N Ditz
~ RumiThe Therapeutic Nest
"A deep silence revives the listening
Of those two who meet on the riverbankLike the ground turning green in a spring wind,
like birdsong beginning inside the egg,
like this universe coming into existence..."
My Healing Philosophy
The Therapeutic Nest:
After more than 25 years of practicing as a holistic depth therapist, I have witnessed many people undergo the slow, extremely subtle and remarkable journey of healing and self-transformation. I continually reflect upon the concept of change: what facilitates it and what hampers it? Like any intricate metamorphosis, this process of psychological growth is astoundingly complex, multilayered, circular and even mysteriously numinous in its unfolding.
As previously described, my philosophy as a therapist is primarily focused on core personal transformation rather than merely symptom management. I strongly believe in the centrality of the therapeutic relationship as a significant healing agent. The importance of the therapeutic relationship as a catalyst for peoples' change process is becoming increasingly well documented in current clinical psychotherapeutic research. Our sense of self is formed and sometimes deformed within the childhood developmental web of human relationships. Fortunately, human beings are often resilient and psychologically supple enough to be reformed, recuperated, and redeemed within new, wholesome adult relational experiences.
My intention is to create a healing and healthy therapeutic environment of positive regard, warm engagement, and a steady compassionate "being with" others that accepts them just as they are while helping them to envision and embody possibilities that extend beyond the distorted prisons of their old ways of thinking, acting and feeling. This relational cocoon establishes a kind of stable nest in which the egg of the other's potential is skillfully held and consistently nourished until the person is able to hatch, grow stronger, and fly off confidently on his or her own capable wings.
N Ditz
~ Stephanie Morgan"Psychotherapy can be a very intimate, loving encounter. In the words of the therapist Paul Russell, 'Therapy is a love relationship... It does not work to try to somehow 'be' loving. The only thing that can work is to feel the love that is already there'. Love is not something that we generate; it is found in the activity of intimately attending. Constancy and care in attention have a quality of love."
There was a time, not so long ago, when the word "love" in the psychotherapeutic relationship was both shunned and viewed as inappropriate and even pathological. Now I smile when I hear eminent senior psychotherapists openly referring to the curative and corrective therapeutic relationship as involving qualities suspiciously similar to aspects of mature caring and love. This therapeutic caring is comprised of such qualities as wholehearted attentiveness, compassion, consistent attunement and resonance as well as an elaborate understanding of how to best relate to the client's psychological dynamics and developmental needs in order to promote maximal healing. It is an exquistely specialized way of attending to another human being that requires healthy boundaries, deep presence, keen perceptiveness, a capacity for authentic confrontation when needed, and a profound regard for the individual's and couples' optimal growing requirements.
The therapeutic relationship is fundamental to the healing process for several reasons. It fosters a corrective, secure and reliable attachment relationship in which earlier childhood emotional injuries can be discovered, expressed, and resolved within a safe and nurturing space. This unique relationship encourages the emergence of traumatic, repressed and/or dissociated memories so that they might be consciously interpreted and integrated, thus reducing their deleterious neural and psychological impact. It also helps to cultivate the person's capacity to develop a more aware Inner Observer who can reflect mindfully and empathically upon his own unfolding subjective experiences, gradually liberating her perspectives of who she is becoming within the broader context of life.
The therapeutic relationship can greatly support the client in establishing a capacity to regulate and self-soothe often regressive states of intense emotional turmoil. It encourages the comprehension and disidentification from automatic and defensive reactions which compound emotional suffering. At its best, the therapy relationship gradually fosters the person's development of a more mature and authentic sense of self who is able to relate to him/herself and others with greater intimacy, honesty and integrity.
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