FAQs - About Therapy

What is psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy is an interpersonal, primarily verbal treatment approach that seeks to uncover your inner resources, or strengths. These strengths are utilised to understand, gain insight and bring resolution to the areas of your life that are challenging or painful.

Generally the roots of most difficulties are established somewhere outside our awareness (i.e. in the unconscious), so the treatment must reach into this area. Otherwise the treatment won't work. Learning on an intellectual level is rarely sufficient to make sustainable life changes.

We are inclined to keep these challenging things outside of our awareness because they are painful. However, it is often the very act of bringing awareness to the root causes that allows resolution to begin. An experienced therapist supports you to move down through the layers, employing your own inner resources, to access and heal the true source of the dysfunction or pain. The art of psychotherapy is in the exploration, uncovering and integration of these issues, in a safe environment.

A trusting relationship between you and your psychotherapist is at the heart of the therapeutic process. Confidentiality is an integral part of this relationship and psychotherapy in general.

At The Bay, we believe in the power of gentleness to do this work. Our psychotherapists are highly skilled and bring a depth of experience and range of therapeutic modalities to their work. Each session addresses your needs in the moment and seeks to understand and heal the influences of past experiences and underlying dynamics. All work is done at your own pace in an environment that is warm and respectful.

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What is insight?

Insight is a new, often sudden, fully felt understanding of a situation or issue you are dealing with. This is different from an intellectual understanding of the issue. When you have an insight, you feel as if you have discovered something profoundly important, like you have turned on the light, allowing you to see the bigger picture of the situation or issue. Gaining insight is at the core of psychotherapy.

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What is trauma?

Trauma is an event, or series of events, that is perceived as extremely overwhelming to the point that it fundamentally disturbs the cohesion of your sense of self. Trauma can relate to a single episode such as a car accident or an assault, or a series of events or experiences that leave you feeling unsafe such as witnessing domestic violence, being sexually abused or bullied at school. Trauma symptoms show up in various ways, physically and psychologically. Some commonly experienced symptoms include flashbacks, intrusive imagery, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, compulsive thinking, roller-coaster emotions, unusual or uncomfortable bodily sensations, mistrust and relationship difficulties.

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How do you work with trauma?

To deal with trauma, it may not be necessary to remember a traumatic event in full, or even at all. Trauma work aims to address all aspects of the impacts trauma can have in your life. Resolution comes when you improve your quality of life by gaining control over and reducing disturbing symptoms, as well as re-establishing a healthy relationship with yourself and your environment. This work is fundamentally focused on the body and restores balance and harmony to your present experience. This delicate work is done very gently and in a step-by-step manner. At The Bay our trauma work is informed by state-of-the art, evidence based innovations in this highly specialised area.

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What is stress?

"Stress is an alarm clock that let's you know you've attached to something not true for you"
Byron Katie, The Work.

The body and mind responds to stress in different ways, but for many people signs of stress can include many physical and emotional symptoms from mild to serious, such as racing or disorganised thoughts, cardio-vascular issues, insomnia, sense of overwhelm, anxiety, exhaustion, decreased work performance, conflict in relationships and intimacy and so on.

Causes from stress are many and can come from obvious sources, such as high workload or demanding relationships. However, for most people there are underlying causes that contribute to and exacerbate the experience of stress. Thus, therapeutic approaches that address both the obvious and latent causes of stress have most effective and sustainable outcomes.

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What is shame?

Shame can be an experience that separates us from the intrinsic knowing that we are lovable and worthy of respect. Unresolved shame can critically undermine our sense of self and the ability to engage in a satisfying life. It can be that we are not aware of the shame we carry, but it plays out in insidious ways and impacts self-esteem, relationships and work life. In psychotherapy, shame refers not to the reaction we all have when we’ve done, said or thought something foolish or embarrassing. Rather, it refers to the deep scarring that arises from having been belittled by someone we perceive to be more powerful than us.

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Does my childhood affect me now?

Much of who we are now is determined by our childhood experiences: patterns of behaviour, the way we see ourselves, how we view the world and the way we relate to others. Internally, we all hold the resonance of a free, creative inner child and a wounded inner child to different degrees.

The "free child" is the place from which our spontaneity, creativity, joyful curiosity, innocence and sense of wonder spring from. The "wounded child" is that part of us which holds the pain from the past, often masking the free child.

Regardless of the circumstances of our upbringing, most of us can relate to early experiences of pain, of feeling misunderstood, abandoned or invaded. So often, a child's essence - their pure innocent self - is misunderstood, ignored, rejected, insulted or hurt. This happens not only via isolated traumatic experiences, but in the ongoing daily interactions in our childhood. This can result in feelings of loneliness, powerlessness, shame, isolation and a sense of hopelessness, which impact on our childhood development and inform the psychology of who we become as an adult. With support, it is possible to heal the wounds of early childhood and free up our inner resources, which include joy and creativity. This allows us to release unhealthy patterns and create new ways of being as an adult.

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