I believe in therapy. In fact, I believe in it so much that I am both a practitioner and a client of the craft. Consequently, I've had the tremendous fortune of being initiated into really beautiful processes of transformation from both positions. My own journey through this somewhat mysterious phenomena has often let me to wonder exactly why therapy "works" when it does.
In light of that confession, I'd like to link you to this lovely little essay about the potential gifts of good psychotherapy: The Folk Art of Therapy. This piece gives one of my favorite explanations about why and how therapy can be so powerfully transformational. If reading it stirs your curiosity at all, I'd like to also recommend another reading assignment: The Gift of Therapy by Irvin Yalom. This book does a beautiful job of exploring the subtleties of healing that the therapy relationship aims to facilitate. If, however, you're a person who needs empirical evidence in order to believe in anything your five senses can't immediately recognize, you might want to look into this book: The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy. And if you have the supremely good fortune to live in the beautiful city of Chicago, and want to attend something that guarantees to facilitate a more provocative conversation than any of the above sources combined, then consider attending this lecture: The Love Cure given through the CG Jung Institute of Chicago in early December of this year.
(Disclaimer: while I enjoy much of what each of these authors posits about the process of therapy, their beliefs about mental health and best practices do not necessarily reflect my own).
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