Anonymous, Female Client
I have been in and out of therapy for many years; seeking out therapy when I hit a low point and then not following through with it when I started to feel better. I ended up quickly back where I started and the cycle would begin again.
I have been seeing Dr. Nick for over the past 4 years through some incredibly difficult life transitions. The fact that I have stayed with Dr. Nick consistently expresses the value I see in what Dr. Nick beings to the therapy process.
After these four years, I can say two things:
Therapy doesn’t solve your problems, it gives you the tools to better manage them in a healthy way
Therapy makes me think deeply held beliefs that have been fueling negative patterns of thought and behavior for a very long time. Whilst this can be confronting and emotional at times; it is has also enabled me to start challenging these engrained beliefs and re-thinking them.
Dr Nick not only strikes a balance between support and challenge, but he also is sensitive to knowing when I may need more focus on ‘fire-fighting’ (i.e. bringing down my emotional distress due to something that is happening in the present versus doing the ‘deep work’ (i.e. when I am better able to delve deeper into my patterns of behavior and explore difficult and painful past experiences). The deep work also comes with a level of structure that we return to - Dr. Nick manages to contextualise my personal experience with the right amount of theory (e.g. using schema thinking).
My advice to those starting therapy is that ‘it is okay to feel unsure and anxious about the process, that’s normal! Manage your expectations, results don’t happen overnight but it is important to stick with the process, come with an open mind and allow yourself to be vulnerable.
Therapy is one of the hardest but most rewarding of my weekly commitments. There are days I look forward to it, days that I dread but never any days where I regret going! I could not be more grateful to Dr. Nick.