Specialties
You may be going through a specific crisis or difficult life transition. Maybe you’re suffering from a chronic long-term dysfunction and want to finally make some healthy and/or necessary changes in your life.
Or perhaps you’re responding to a deep desire to live life more fully. Or you’re hungry to become a more honest authentic person. Maybe there is “stuff” keeping you from living a full and good life, keeping you from more successful relationships, keeping you from living creatively and confidently in the larger world.
Each of these are what we’re about.
Some background perspective
From the very beginning, psychotherapy (psychological counseling and therapy) has focused on the individual. Initially this work would focus on the specific problems or suffe ring of the individual – as a visit to your physician’s office will focus on your own specific physical problems and well-being.
However, something has gotten lost in these days when the entire culture seems to want to focus on the individual. Today the usual focus on the individual is for the sake of that individual. I want to become a better person, live a better life, so that I can enjoy life more. And we live in a world and culture which increasingly believes this is a natural right for each of us. We even attempt to transport this culture and lifestyle to the rest of the globe, often assuming it’s our best gift to the world. And maybe this is true.
Nevertheless, behind this focus on the health of the individual is an older and deeper meaning. The focus on the individual is for the sake of the collective. By “collective” I mean the family, the community, the workplace, the government, the environment, the universe – what indigenous folks may call “The People.” My best purpose in the world is for the sake of the larger world. Ask a policeman, a fireman, a soldier, all who are willing to put themselves in harm’s way, why they do this – and their primary answer is that he or she does it for the safety and well-being of others.
This is why much individual therapy, beyond the immediate relief of one’s own pain and suffering, involves the question of “what is my purpose in this life?” Every mature culture throughout human history has maintained ways of asking this central question – and often in much more mature ways than our own. I’ve discovered, in my many years of psychological practice, that to focus on one’s life purpose is often the means of relief from much individual suffering. What others will see as the diagnostic name of a particular mental illness to be cured (or controlled), I will also view as the soul/psyche’s way of asking to live more relevantly for the sake of the larger world. The ancient healers knew this.
There is an interesting transformation that takes place when a person gets his or her life together and begins living the way he or she wants to live. Some therapists will speak of the goals of therapy as gaining greater success and power. And that’s a common focus. But the deeper ethics of therapy will also insist that with success and power comes a greater social or culltural responsibility. I have found that one way or another, the self discovers a desire and ability to give of oneself in the larger world. As you can see, there are many different languages that speak of this work.
Call me – Bill McDonald, Phone 810 629-0760