I have been a licensed psychologist for over 39 years, working primarily with adults in outpatient mental health settings and private practice, providing individual and couples therapy and teaching other therapists how to provide positive growth experiences for their clients.
What helps is talking with someone who accepts the choices we have made while also acknowledging and fostering the possibility of real change. Keys to this include differentiating love and attachment, acceptance and resignation, responsibility and obligation. While pain is part of life, suffering is optional. As a Greek philosopher said, almost 2,000 years ago, "It is not events that disturb me, but the way that I perceive them."
In working with me, clients can expect to learn how our mind uses a variety of strategies to maintain the status quo and follow its own survival agenda. Additionally, clients discover how to give themselves the permission they've been waiting for to make choices that support who they are, rather than who they think they should be.
