MISCONCEPTIONS

• A common misconception is that psychotherapy is for getting advice. This is not what therapy is truly about. This is because psychotherapy is not about what is consciously known. Rather, it is about those things about yourself that you protect yourself from knowing. For example, we may know what we want to do but end up powerless to act on that knowledge. This is the reason that psychotherapy exists and can be immeasurably helpful.

• Another unfortunate misconception is that psychotherapy is about what has happened in the. This misconception comes about because problems that bring people to therapy originate in early development, primarily in childhood. When we look to the past in psychotherapy, it is in order to learn what shapes us. Inevitably, what we discover is that the past, is not in the past, but in the present of our every day lives.