My Approach: Setting Goals for Therapy

In the beginning of our work together, I will help you set treatment goals: How will we know when we are successful? What will change? How will success manifest in your life day to day, week to week?

I will work to help you define your goals as thoroughly as possible. I will also work to help you make these goals pragmatic and applied, so they describe actual changes in your life. In other words, "When you are happier or calmer, or more focused, motivated, grounded, or less critical, passive, fearful, etc. what specifically might those changes allow you to do differently in your life?"

I think it is important to do therapy within a structure that can guide us and give us a way of measuring our progress along the way, and especially at the end. That way, we can always have a way of asking whether we are doing what you want to be doing, and whether our work is in the service of your goals. The goals can always be changed or added to along the way. Or, we might set new goals for a new phase of therapy.