Conversational therapy is the basis for making counseling a reality. For most of us, this is a safe way to go into counseling.
The conversation is necessary for understanding:
- What matters to you
- What exactly you are up against, in what context,
- How you deal with this today (coping),
- How you experience it,
- What you wish to evolve towards,
- What adjustments you wish to make,
- How you can influence your environment.
As stated earlier, we make sure you feel heard and understood in an unconditional way.
The rationalists among us will argue that emotions are not important. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Our human behavior is primarily driven and determined by our emotional perception of something. Our “thinking” can influence this. However, not taking into account our emotional experience always leads to being unhappy. Or at best to not being as happy as could be. Just say that our emotional intelligence must be used to its fullest. Our ‘thinking’ is necessary to make what we dream of possible and true.
This thinking has two dimensions.
The first is rationalizing which allows us to plan and set ourselves a path on how to achieve what you think is important.
The second is to understand the emotional experience of yourself and others to realize the optimal interaction between people so that you achieve what you find important.
The emotional dimension is frightening to many people or dismissed as “too soft. Walsha will work with you here in a mature and most appropriate way for you.
A mistake people often make is that a conversation, by itself, will bring about the change. However, this is not true.
A change will take place permanently only if you push yourself to get over those things you are up against:
- To think differently (cognitively, narratively)
and - Approach differently, that is, adjust your own behavior (behavioral),
and - Interpret differently (cognitively, dialogue)
In this way you change the experience as well as your emotional perception as well as the result.
In short you need to get started and work on yourself. It is like learning to play a musical instrument. You will never become a good guitarist or piano player just by talking about it and/or reading about it. You do learn to develop the best out of yourself (from amateur musician to virtuoso) by playing the instrument through practice, practice, and practice again.
The nice thing about therapy is that it doesn’t take years. The change takes place in a few weeks to months provided you actively engage in it.
At Walsha, we will make sure that all you learn, step by step, to deal differently with your own behavior, thinking and emotional experience.
So Walsha’s talk therapy is always accompanied by “assignments. These are collaboratively created assignments to try out change and practice, practice and practice at what works. The time you spend on your own change outside the walls of the therapy room greatly determines your outcome.