Sharon Winkler, Psychotherapist, Vancouver WA

What are your goals for therapy?

Do you want to improve your marriage or other family relationships?

Deepen your friendships?

Increase your capacity for intimacy?

Feel more confident in social and professional situations?

Achieve more in school or at work?

Exercise more control over yourself and your life?

Understand yourself and others better?

Approach life with more joy, optimism, and vigor?

Be more creative?

Expand your possibilities?

Perhaps you want to successfully navigate a difficult life transition such as marriage, divorce, remarriage, parenthood, career change, retirement, illness, or bereavement.

Perhaps you are generally content with yourself and your relationships, but need to develop some new skills to meet the demands of a new situation.

Your goals help determine the best therapeutic approach for you:

In-depth Individual Therapy

A growth-enhancing therapy that seeks to expand your understanding of self and others and to enhance your personal potential. The development of self-understanding helps to alleviate problems in living and psychological distress.

Results tend to be stable and long lasting.

Session content includes discussion of past and current relationships, symptoms, dreams, fantasies, and your thoughts and feelings about the therapist (called 'transference').

Frequency of sessions can range from two to five times per week, depending on the intensity of experience you seek.

Requires a substantial commitment and is typically a long-term approach.

Time-limited Therapy

The goal is to eliminate or reduce a very specific, narrowly defined problem (for example, a child's temper tantrums). While insight sometimes results, the goal is behavior change.

Most successful with people who are psychologically healthy and have satisfying and supportive relationships. In addition, you must be able to define, very specifically, what you want to accomplish.

Not usually a good choice for problems that are severe, life threatening, or have existed for a long time.

An efficient treatment, having a clearly defined beginning and end.

Results are not always stable and long lasing. There may be a substitution of one symptom for another (for example, the child no longer has temper tantrums, but begins to wet the bed).

You can expect specific tasks or homework assignments between sessions.

Session content usually includes discussion of the problem, attempted solutions, and outcome of homework assignments. Your past, except as it relates to the current problem, is not a typcial focus.

Frequency of sessions: weekly or biweekly at the beginning, then less often (perhaps monthly or even less frequently).

Length of therapy: short-term.