WHAT IS TALK THERAPY?

Talk therapy has become a major tool in helping people with emotional difficulties. What is talk therapy? A simple way to understand it is that it’s a setting where a client is talking with a mental health professional about difficulties, seeking advice, direction or just pouring out his/her heart. In the general public, psychotherapy many times becomes the synonym for talk therapy, and the lay person might imagine that “going to therapy” means exactly going to talk therapy.

Our world is far more specific. For example, if you’re buying cheese, you will specify whether it’s Swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, or one of many other choices. The same holds truth for talk therapy. In this blog, I’ll try to give the reader a better understanding about the variety of talk therapy modalities, clients’ needs and more.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF TALK THERAPY?

What are its limitations? What do you do when it’s not helping? Finally, are other types of therapy available beyond talk therapy?

I’ll start with clients’ needs. Realizing what a person needs in therapy can help him/her choose the right avenue to pursue. Understanding one’s needs can even help the client interview a potential therapist to make sure specific needs will be met in therapy. So what are the different clients’ needs in therapy?

Listening

Human beings grow up in families, which should help them to become functional, happy adults that can participate fully in their own lives. For that we need to be able to listen to others, to the overt as well as the implied messages the other person is telling us. We also need to be listened to. There are issues, feelings, beliefs, and events that we want to share with people close to us, in our families, in our social life and at work settings. It turns out many times that the need to talk, explain, share with others is not that simple. In general people are mostly focused on themselves and are not easily open to listen in depth to others.

When children are able to share what’s on their mind with their parents and other significant adults in their lives, they grow up to be adults who feel secure and valuable. As adults they probably learned how to be involved in conversations where they can mutually listen and to be listened to.

Those who did not feel secure in the ability to share their hearts as children might find themselves having communication difficulties as adults. They find it hard to listen to others and to share their own experiences and feelings, too. These adults typically felt as teenagers and children that they were unfulfilled, ignored, and lacking enough quality attention. So as adults they often feel that social situations are awkward and even painful.

Meeting a professional who can be an active listener can help fulfill this need and teach this type of client how to naturally connect with others and find through relationship the way for mutual listening. Talk therapy can do a great job of addressing this need. The professional therapist, though, has to be able to participate with the client, connect on deeper emotional levels and to be able to hear the unsaid messages between the said words.

Getting Advice and Direction

People can find themselves at times being overwhelmed by multiple opposing possibilities they are facing in different areas of life. Maybe they have family members or friends who would listen to them, but listening is not what they need. They are confused, not sure about what is the right step to take in a specific area in their life. Sometimes they can be ashamed about past actions or what they are thinking of doing. Talk therapy can be a perfect setting to sort out challenging issues with someone who can be trusted but is also an objective outsider. The professional therapist needs to have high capacity for empathy and a strong sense of self to draw boundaries between him/herself and the client. Above all, the therapist must be an external, supportive advisor and not judgmental.

Dealing with strong emotions. Sometimes, clients become overwhelmed by strong emotions. They can feel deep rage at other people or situations. They can be engulfed in deep sorrow over a loss of someone close, or they can be overwhelmed by guilt, anxiety and shame. In such circumstances, talk therapy becomes a separate space, where the client is able to feel these emotions and express thoughts and beliefs associated with the specific emotion in a safe and accepting, non-judgmental environment.

Personal Education

Often times, clients need to learn about subjects that are relevant to their specific life challenges. These are situations where the therapist would use talk therapy to convey messages, ideas, and instructions. This could include how to behave in certain situations, what to say, when to say it, etc. These educational sessions can become the main course of therapy, helping the client to be more stable and sure in his/her own life, intellectually and emotionally.

Mediation

Talk therapy can be used in an individual setting, as in a one on one therapy, and it can be used in wider situations like couples therapy, family therapy and/or group therapy. Many times, wider contexts like couples or family therapy tend to elicit strong emotions. Each individual participant can receive the right message by talking out challenges. The therapist can educate each party about their specific needs. Open conversations and education can open up the participants to the necessity of mutual support. Conflicts regularly take place when there is a lack of mutual care and respect towards the other. In talk therapy, this situation will be addressed from the point of view of each participant to achieve resolution.

WHAT’S BEYOND TALK THERAPY?

As any therapy goes, at the end of it we expect to heal. Talk therapy in general is an important way to achieve that.
However, there are populations and conditions that talk therapy won’t be able to produce the healing effect. Babies and toddlers who do not have the command of the language yet, cannot literally talk. Children between the ages 5 to 9 can benefit from talk therapy up to a certain point while play therapy should help them heal better.

People who suffer from physical symptoms, will find talk therapy as an un-effective tool to resolve their physical issues.
People who are profoundly depressed or anxious, will not be able to hold on the conversation part of therapy. They need relief from their mental pain and talking about it will not bring about the healing. The hope of the start of therapy in these cases, will gradually transform into a sense of disappointment and ultimately, will feel like a waste of time, like its all just words.

Energy Therapy

There is absolutely another way to dramatically improve physical health in babies, children and adults who suffer from physical/mental painful conditions, and increase the healing process. I’m talking about Energy Therapy.

Energy Therapy might sound like an elusive, abstract notion that doesn’t seem to address or resolve anything. But that’s not true at all, and why?
Our body consists of approximately 50 trillion cells and every one of them “knows” why we are getting sick and what needs to be done in order to heal. Multiply this knowledge 50 trillion times, and you meet a computer-like power that holds massive information about us. In order to tap into this knowledge, we need to be able to “talk” with the body and mind.

In every one of us, there is a healthy center that holds this knowledge. This center is like an antenna, receives and broadcast information from our body out and from the world around us in.

Muscle Testing

We can communicate with this health center using muscle-testing.
A major part of our body is the muscular system. Muscles in their nature are contracting and relaxing, hence, are able to give us feedback in real time about the condition/conditions of our body and mind, and if there are issues, the muscles will guide us as far as how to get healthy.
So if we find ourselves in talk therapy that takes us nowhere, with no healing in the horizon, we better switch to energy therapy that will be able to produce the needed healing effect.

This is exactly when and where IPEC Therapy gets into action. I have helped hundreds of clients in the last 20 years, healing complex conditions using this therapy. Issues like, digestive tract problems, frequent flus and colds, skin difficulties, migraine headaches, allergies, breathing and sinus difficulties, arthritis, muscles ligaments and tendons issues, nervous tics, Panic attacks and anxieties, chronic fatigue, sleeping difficulties and many more were some of the cases that were successfully healed.

Do you suffer from any stubborn, chronic condition that nothing seems to help? Just call me.

We can help!
For more information please call:
818.501.8029