My Relational Psychotherapy Approach

Relational psychotherapy focuses on empathy. My specific way of working is called Intersubjective Systems Theory or Phenomenological Contextual Psychoanalytic Theory. Long story short, our lives are not separate from others that are in it, nor are they from the world.

The idea of empathy that I work with is empathic attunement. What the heck does that even mean? Well, how we empathize, as well as how we do not empathize, has to do with our experiences. Particularly our early experiences taught us and formed our current understanding of the world. If there has been relationship difficulty or other trauma, we as human beings have formed a meaning around that which will affect how we go about our lives.

Experiences become a part of us. Now let’s say that looking at someone’s life is like looking at different musicians in a band. Think of them as representing different parts of a person’s experiences. So you have the lead singer and she is singing the melody and that is the overall conscious belief the person identifies with. Then there is the guitarist and maybe he is perhaps playing the notes under the lyrics which give a feeling of the emotions of the person and how they respond to their world. Then the pianist may resemble how the person goes about their daily tasks or routine, non-challenging events though she keeps the general melody and continuity of things and the drummer is perhaps able to guide the rhythm by what events are easy to deal with or manage the intensity by which we are impacted in situations; he might slow things down for a while if need be. We may, though, have different kinds of bass musicians in the band. A base player might know the songs and work hard to hit all the right notes.

However, what if there is not sheet music, as in life? In this case, the Intersubjectivist therapist is aking to a bass player who can listen keenly for the deep low notes, the ones that might not be readily and preferably at our attention.

With subtlety, we may find a new aspect of our experience that is important. Not only that, but they help us find how the experience, these deeper notes, work into the rest of the music. With this understanding, there is a different feeling. You may gain a different understanding of ourselves, feel more connected as well.