Patients often come to psychotherapy feeling that their distress will continue indefinitely. Psychotherapy provides an explanation for the distress that is adaptive — that is, the patient understands that he or she can do something to improve his or her situation. Psychotherapy  leads the patients into healthy actions and improves aspects of their lives, whether it is thinking more positive thoughts, creating better relationships, more appropriately expressing emotions, or enacting other positive changes.

Are there different types of psychotherapy?

There are many specific types of psychotherapy, each with its own approach.  Often they are divided into groups depending on the goals of treatment.  Supportive psychotherapy involves areas such as crisis intervention, marital therapy and communication issues.   By focusing on a person’s existing strengths and coping mechanisms, through the use of encouragement, clarification of thinking, and support, counseling will often resolve specific conflicts with which the individual is struggling.  Dynamic or insight-oriented psychotherapy is used to change, in positive ways, the ways individuals copes with their thoughts and feelings, resulting in increased capacity to experience feelings, be more intimate in relationships, and gain control over the impact that their thoughts and feelings have on their behaviors.