Depth Therapy
This is a chance to explore the layers of who you are, to find inspiration and guide your life with greater wisdom.
Depth therapy is a good choice for anyone facing a turning point, transition, rocky period, or a time of questioning. Here, you can find unpressured mental space. Time for the thoughtful, productive reflection that is otherwise hard to find in the day-to-day busyness of work and life.
Self-knowledge
The core of depth therapy is an effort to gain self-knowledge: a goal that has been central to philosophy and the lives of wise people down the ages. Gaining self-knowledge means exploring, building an understanding of, and developing deeper and better relationships with different aspects of the self.
It involves gaining insight into the patterns and themes of our lives; what shapes our reactions and relationships; the desires and inner world of imagination that drives us deep down; our shadow sides that we have pushed away or not yet learnt to relate to; and the place of our day-to-day ego in its broader context. It also involves clarifying our needs: what we need in order to grow and thrive as the best versions of ourselves.
While many therapies take as their starting point the problem, and see the person through the lens of that problem, depth therapy takes as its starting point the person, considering any problems they are facing, but also exploring the inner landscapes and layers that make up who they are.
The result is a more thorough engagement with the complexity we all hold inside us. And a journey for the curious, like starting a novel or learning to paint a self-portrait. A path that is complex, rarely predictable—but always an adventure.
How it works.
The first session
At your first session with your therapist, they will introduce themselves and answer any questions you have, as well as describing key parameters of therapy, such as the therapist's commitment to confidentiality. After that, the floor is yours to start with whatever you want to talk about. This can be anything, no matter how small or large, serious or light.
The professional relationship
A bedrock of your relationship with your therapist is that they are nonjudgemental. From their daily work, as well as engagement with world literature, history, art, and philosophy, they know how vast is the range of often strange places our minds can go. 'Strange' is a relative term, of course; therapists know how very normal it is to be strange, complicated, and multi-layered. In a therapy relationship you have complete freedom to be yourself and to share or not share whatever is on your heart and mind.
Intertwining themes
Through depth therapy you can clarify how you want to lead the next phase of your life; you can reflect on relationships; explore questions of meaning; learn alertness to your emotions and some freedom from the grip of moods; manage life transitions; rediscover passions, and sides of yourself beyond those currently in use. The particular course therapy takes is idiosyncratic. Connections and patterns emerge over time: things we never could have predicted we'd realize. Which is part of what makes those realizations valuable.
Ongoing therapy
To get a taste of therapy you can try one session. After that, six to ten sessions is time for a short journey of exploration. We recommend people try that, then see how they feel about if they'd like to continue.
Given that therapy is a journey of personal growth, this never happens quickly. We are biological beings; we grow like the trees grow: with the seasons. Spending a few seasons in therapy—like spending years in education—can foster an expansion of capacities, and a wise perspective for the next chapter of life.