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Marc Berke, Ph.D. (CA Lic. #MFT15111)
Seeking Change
I want to welcome you to what might be one of the most important steps in your life, reaching out and asking for assistance after attempting to resolve issues without success. Often times people come to therapy or counseling with a problem to which they cannot find a solution. Many times it is how the problem is being defined that does not allow a solution. It is then the task of the therapist/counselor to help you redefine the problem so there are solutions.
The foundation of good psychotherapy and counseling is the relationship you establish with your therapist/counselor. Research has shown that the technique the therapist or the counselor uses is not as important as the relationship you build together. As the work progresses and trust is established, you will actually use the relationship between you and your therapist/counselor as a workspace, to resolve problems in your life.
You are welcome to contact me now and see how you can change your problem or questions into solutions.
Because the relationship with the therapist is so essential to the process, it is important to find a therapist to whom you feel a connection with as well as feeling safe and secure. In psychotherapy and counseling, you intentionally allow yourself to be deeply vulnerable to another human being. Obviously, if you are to allow yourself to be so vulnerable, you must feel safe. I will show you how a good therapist builds that sense of trust and safety with you.
As your therapist/counselor I will help you create what is called a working collaborative alliance so that we can define your issues as quickly as possible. The working collaborative alliance is the healthy and realistic collaboration between therapist/counselor and client. The most critical aspect of creating this alliance is empathy.
As a client, regardless of the issues that you bring, you need to know that you are not going to be judged. What has continually worked for me as a therapist in my over 35 years as a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist is what I call empathic understanding. If I am challenged or questioned in any way by my clients my first response is to check in with you to see if there has been a failure of empathy or understanding on my part. I know that the most successful part of any psychotherapy/counseling treatment is that the person I am working with feels acknowledged, understood, and respected. I demonstrate this trait over and over again when I work with individuals, couples, families, and groups.
In conclusion, people come to counseling/therapy because they want change. Researchers and theorists have found that there are two types of change, First Order and Second Order Change. Simply put First Order Change is fixing or healing the symptom and Second Order Change is getting to the cause of the symptom for a change to occur that will not allow the symptom to return. Rather than taking a pill to cure the symptoms of an illness (first order change), we can get vaccinated never to have the illness again (second order change). So good counseling/therapy not only cures but helps you move forward with what we can call a new and better “normal.”
Albert Einstein describes the process of change the best when he said…
“No problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it”
Marc Berke, Ph.D., LMFT