psychotherapy is at its best an art

Some of my patients want therapy to be a certain way. As a professional I want to be open and give you what you want. Therapy cannot be everything so misconceptions must be brought out and cleared away. Some want structure and psychoeducation. Others want it to be motivational, to free them from inaction. I see six to nine patients a day, and each one demands something from me, whether the demand is covert or overt, it is there. And that's a good challenge. I always try to ask the day I meet someone, how has therapy been for you in the past? what worked and what did not? What would you like it to be? I do like working with the ones who ask for a more freeform, conversational approach. Often the younger ones, Generation Z, like it this way. Psychotherapy is at its best an art. Each session becomes an adventure, an exploration. Curiosity makes it interesting. You don't always know where to begin and you may be surprised where we end up.   #katyamills

July 11 2023

As a practicing psychotherapist, I notice my clients coming into therapy worn down from battling external world stressors and they do not yet have the approach or the skills (mindfulness) to see how the internal world (thoughts, feelings, sensations, impulses) is operating. Or they may be avoiding the interior (which often works against them). You can empower yourself by learning mindfulness which is in some part just directing your attention to your internal world and listening without judgment. You will find that your greater awareness can hold just about anything, and you can have a little distance from them by becoming a witness of your own experience. Try simply noticing, acknowledging and describing what's happening. What thoughts are arising? What feelings? What sensations or impulses are arising in relationship to those automatic feelings and thoughts? These feelings and thoughts inform one another and influence our behavior and our inaction, too. It helps to build a relationship with them. Dialogue with your fear, your anxiety, your sadness. Ask it what it wants from you at any particular moment. You will find they have good and bad sides to them. They may be trying to help you but in all the wrong ways. You can challenge them if they are over or under blown. Meditation can help. Watching them arise as you are trying to focus on your posture and your breath. Letting it all be. Acknowledging it happening without judging or criticizing yourself. Becoming less attached and less unattached or avoidant. Watch how they subside, arising and falling like waves. Understand the natural cycles of things. Surf an urge or impulse without actually acting on it. See how long you can last. Play with it. The problem with mindlessness, in my opinion, is that we become enmeshed with aspects of our interior world, and when you think you are your thoughts, or you are your feelings, this can cause suffering. You can learn not to buy in so much. Just let them in, have them for tea, but challenge them when they have outrageous ideas like telling you that you are nobody or nobody likes you, or that you will never get things right because you're a screw up. No! That is a lie! You’re really not broken or faulty or unloved. You are living in the context of an unforgiving, fast-paced, judgmental, patriarchal, capitalist world! And it is having a bad effect on you. Anyone might naturally feel lonely, alienated, weak, and hopeless in this context. Don't believe everything your automatic thoughts tell you. Talk to them. Question them. Stay curious. And try to keep moving toward your values, toward your happiness. Fight for your life if you must. Find the ones out there who you can understand, the ones who can appreciate your struggle, the ones who give you the sense of belonging that everyone is thirsty for. Try to envision your best self and be your best self today. Don't give up hope!  #katyamills

california psychotherapist

Katya Mills, LMFT #129963

update

i got a promotion this week -- Clinical Director -- at tpcp.org... excited to make a greater impact for our community ... listening and speaking from the heart ... helping my team of outpatient case workers support our people out in South Natomas and North Highlands ... life is more and more challenging on the streets ... what with mental illness and socioeconomic challenges ... cultural/racial injustices. i ask myself every day: what more can i do to help? at least i have a small platform and some skills to offer. 8 years clean off the hard stuff. what with the poetry, the books, my friends, as a therapist, life keeps getting more and more exciting.

PTI and Don Hadlock

Don Hadlock, co-founder of PTI: the Process Therapy Institute in San Jose, passed away in January this year @ 77 years old. I wanted to tribute him as a leader and teacher and mentor and all around wonderful human being. I was blessed to encounter him within a year long Group Process Therapy series while I was enrolled as a Master's level student in Holistic Counseling at JFK University in Campbell, CA. He and his wife Carol founded PTI 40 years ago, he said, after having had a revelation while driving through the Santa Cruz mountains about the difference between content and process. Content (in the context of therapy) is the words a client speaks. Process is what they are doing while they are speaking; essentially, any other ways they may be communicating through their behavior. Maybe they are biting their lip or laughing when they mean to cry. There is a wealth of information which may be overlooked by talk therapy focused on content. By holding space for and calling attention to process, one can guide someone through present-moment interventions, deepen the therapeutic alliance and cultivate both self and ego awareness. Process therapy is also trauma-informed.  The 'pain body' as Tolle refers to it, encompasses how we hold our history of trauma in our body, which naturally extends to how we relate to the world: ourselves, our friends, family, and community. Mr. Hadlock taught us how to help a client interface the pain body from a gentle and invitational spirit. I am indebted to him. I believe my ability as a psychotherapist to create space and facilitate process and group process in my clinical practice, sources from many of his teachings. I think of him often in my work and I miss him.

therapy styles by k

let's throw some light on the relationship between thoughts and feelings and behaviors. how i feel about a situation reflects my values. if i express pain because i am lonely, then i will ask myself, do i value friendship? this is absent but implicit. if i feel useless when unemployed, is not the underlying message that i value working hard? feelings can help me connect with myself and others. when i am upset and i show it, people may become more invested in helping. when i cry or vent my anger, it's a release and i feel alive. the thoughts which color my feelings are not always facts. feelings are not facts because the thoughts behind them are colored in by attitudes and beliefs and assumptions. if i can increase my awareness of my automatic thoughts, patterns of belief systems i inherited from my family will begin to reveal themselves. i was embedded within a family system. the family developed its own coping strategies within the greater community, manifesting in thoughts and behaviors. what i was taught then may or may not be of use to me today, and may even get in the way of my health and happiness. i can give myself a chance to discard the useless, irrational, ineffective ways of being, and evolve into more fruitful ways of being. this can free me up to be playful and respond to the world differently, lessen my inhibitions and make healthier choices.

mental. quattro (plus video)

He was showing me unconditional positive regard.
I was telling him all the ways and places I was scarred.
He was chewing on the fat of my tales.
I was eating all my fingernails.
He was redirecting me like a train conductor.
I saw red and charged like a bull.
He was charging me through the teeth.
Paid in full.

I was waxing poetic.
His thoughts told him I was pathetic.
I gussied up to him like a whore.
He had his back to the door.
I blasted him for offering me Prozac.
He looked at me like I was crazy.
Called me a fucking throwback.
Or was it the voices in my head?

I cut my wrists and put them in his face.
He let me bleed out. Unconditionally.
I paid to have his carpet cleaned.
To keep my credit clean.
He was showing me unconditional positive regard.

I asked for a cup of tea.
He fifty-one fiftied me.

I ran away before the sedation.
Into the flickering movie
of guided imagery.

He was golden showering me
with unconditional positive regard.
I had clearly drawn up my knees,
drawn up my guard.

He drew checks off my back account.
I drew pictures of infinity.
He rented Girl, Interrupted.
Then handled me with
more or less
care.

I was embryonic again.
Statuesque.
He wore a Buddha smile on his face.
I was unfashionably broke
and stressed.
Developmentally-challenged.
Locked up in chemical
arrest.

He poisoned me with
unconditional
positive
regard.