Hi, I’m Dr. Ghoul, a psychotherapist at Azoth Allspiritus, LLC, an integrative holistic healthcare practice. In this post, I want to go over a general overview of what psychotherapy may look like when working with me. I’m hoping this will get some of your questions answered, especially if you’ve never been to therapy before.

What is Psychotherapy? Psychotherapy is a process that involves exploring both conscious and unconscious thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. This exploration can help you identify patterns in your life, gain new perspectives, and develop healthier coping mechanisms to address the issues you are experiencing. The ultimate goal of psychotherapy is to improve your mental health and overall well-being. 

Therapeutic  Approach: I like to help patients improve their mental health by using a cognitive-behavioral approach—helping patients better understand how their core beliefs feed into their thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and how all of these are intertwined. By identifying and changing unhelpful thought patterns, we can work towards healthier behaviors and emotional responses. In some cases we may focus on hanging unhelpful behavioral patterns to help move you towards more helpful thoughts and emotional responses.  There are different techniques I may use to help you with this, but it may be as simple as asking certain questions for you to reflect on and being a person who listens without judgment—Carl Rogers, a humanistic psychologist, calls this unconditional positive regard. I also take aspects of a transpersonal framework to help people explore their consciousness—this may be through mindfulness activities or exploring the subconscious through dreams (note: I use dreamwork as a way for patients to make sense of their dreams; I do not give or rely on pre-made interpretations, which was more of a Freudian approach).

My Role as a Licensed Professional Counselor (AKA Psychotherapist): I think of myself as more of a guide—I won’t give advice to patients because it is your life to live. I may give a more objective view of how I see a situation to help patients become unstuck. As a patient speaks to me, I am gathering information and putting pieces together, sort of like a detective.

Session Structure: To give you a little bit more information about how therapy works, let’s go over how sessions are structured. I provide a free 15-minute video consultation so you can get your questions answered and also to see if we would be a good fit. If we move forward, full sessions are about 50-60 minutes in length. Sessions one and two are focused on building rapport, so you as the patient feel comfortable opening up in sessions. I am mostly listening and asking questions to get a better understanding of who you are and how your experiences may have affected you. We will also talk about your goals for sessions. Usually, at the start of session three, I will go over a treatment plan to help patients understand what techniques we’ll be doing to help them reach their goals. This is a collaborative process, just as much as all parts of therapy. It may change over the course of sessions based on a patient’s needs. Sessions three and beyond are more focused on helping guide the patient towards their goals by using specific techniques—these may be more unstructured or structured based on a patient’s preferences.

Duration and Fees: Because there are many variables to consider, it’s difficult to determine how many sessions are needed. I can give a ballpark estimate that most patients may notice some changes within 10 sessions. Of course, these are your sessions, so you are free to leave at any time. This is why I have a reduced fee for the first three sessions—sessions 1, 2, and 3 are only $50 each, which is well below my rates. Sessions 4 and beyond are $150 each.

Bundle Sessions: Aside from traditional talk psychotherapy, I also offer various bundle sessions for those who want more structured sessions. Please note that these are not a replacement for traditional psychotherapy and so can be a bit more limiting on what we cover. You can learn more about bundles on our website.

Getting Started: If you are interested in seeing if we would be a good fit to work together for psychotherapy, please fill out the appointment form below to register for a free consultation. I’ll get back to you within two business days to set up your session.

I hope this gave a bit more insight into what working with me may look like. There is a lot more I wasn’t able to cover, so if you have more questions, please feel free to send me an email at [email protected].