Sensitive Person, Burned Out, or Highly Devoted? Seek Real-Time Therapy
What is real-time therapy? It’s not my invention, but real-time therapy is psychotherapy of ‘being real’, that takes place in real time, with a real, present, and available person. And it is done regularly and enough to accomplish what you really need to. It can be done by distance but, regardless, involves you and me sharing the same moments in clock-time.
You might think there is no time or money in your life for an hour therapy / counseling session, once or twice per week. But:
I know from experience that if you start with real-time therapy, you will save yourself effort, time, and frustration. For instance,
- You learn there is much more than texting bits of advice requests to an overstretched person.
- You will see that, while it is a process, you really were helped.
- You become proud of your solid work with a keen, patient guide who does not claim instant miracles.
- You will discover that therapy does, indeed, work.
If miracle fixes don’t work for you, it is a sign of what is right with you.
There is a place for little bits between sessions, and a place for super-brief counseling. But if you want to change the emotional and mental factors that keep leading you back to the same old problem, or if you need to form new resources for new problems, you need ‘real-time’ work.
“Wait”, you might ask—”in this multi-tasking, fast-media world, why should therapists get this luxury? Shouldn’t therapists also have to accommodate this pressure, speed, and social media persona stuff, rushed emails, texts, etc.?”
When it comes to the actual therapy work, no. It defeats what we could do together to grow you. There’s plenty of personal time outside the therapy room for therapists, too, to contend with today’s double-edged technology and social influences.
“Anyway, I can’t have this real time for me.”
Yes, you can. My way of working shows you by example and experience that you hunger for it.
Mental and emotional breathing room to express and become what you are meant to be. By soaking up this atmosphere and relationship quality, you learn (through both words and the unspoken) that you deserve it and can have it. That is, if you realize the value, insist on it, and find the time.
My method is to: be fresh and ready, open to your point of view, protect your special time with me, understand where you hurt and respect it, give sensitively productive questions and observations, and collaborate on supported, insight-based experiments to see what heals you.
You do need the time.
I know you feel desperate and in a hurry. No one wants pain to take a long time to resolve. But any additional impatience is going to make things harder, not easier. This concern with speed and ‘squeezing in’ comes from our promoted culture, whose pushiness, judgments, and speed are only increasing.
“But there’s something wrong with people who can’t always do it all, and fast–right?” Wrong. Don’t worry. Others can’t do it either, and they hurt themselves trying. With emotional healing, just like wound healing, ‘quick, quick, quick’ is not going to last and it’s just more fatiguing, confusing, and dehumanizing.
Sometimes the needed realizations need to be repeated, but it gets easier and easier to take in and digest. I have seen this many times. Mental and emotional blooming is usually moderately paced, though occasionally rapid. Or slow then rapid, or vice versa. Or medium throughout.
Choose it, regardless. As a highly sensitive or devoted person, you have a special courage to do it.
You may need help to see (and then slip through) the grip of today’s illusions.
The world mostly doesn’t target you with some ‘plan’. Still, even when it’s not on purpose, others will try to rush, guilt, shame, subtly mold, or pressure you into their preferred ‘you’.
At first, the world trying to press you into a mold is not even noticed. Then, when you see it, it is a shock, a hurt, and a disappointment. There is then a process that differs between people but still centers on one main question. A question that cannot be answered with ‘proof’ but instead with conviction and self-love.
You’ll do best at your pace. Your need is real, which is why you are here, and why I hear. However, desperation does not have to become a demand for an ultra-quick fix. No matter how much the world pushes you on fast, fast, fast, everything at once, yelling at you, ‘look, this is what to be’—it is not a requirement.
Mind blower: Sometimes you don’t need ‘more coping’.
Sometimes you need to refuse or decline things, ask for connection rather than more tasks, be upset in a safe environment before having to cope, or just go quiet and get to know your first reactions and desires for a bit. In other cases, you may need more or longer time actually strengthening and repairing, so you lean less on ‘coping skills’.
Feelings of desperation and pressure can lead to a realization that is unexpected, relieving, and empowering: you need to slow down and give yourself the soft-but-strong boundaries to detoxify and relax.
- Choose which trained, patient, real-time person you let in to help you.
- Then, when you feel safe, we really work on seeing you, for significant periods.
- You will partially depend on me to an appropriate degree, until you do not need me any longer.
- Good psychotherapy is both a relief of acceptance and understanding and an exciting, fulfilling, productive journey.
- From a less toxified, more centered place, you can better release pent-up grief and frustration, process your emotions and thoughts, understand and accept yourself and life, reformulate your viewpoints, and recreate your life.
If you cannot believe that you are worth 50-minutes of focused, real-time therapy per week, then whose agenda are you going to believe?
You must make the choice, because sometimes even friends and family will not suggest it. Because even if they don’t know it, they need you to keep the plates spinning in the way they are used to, or the way they want. Even allies may still be tied up in their own reactions, needs, worries, beliefs, etc.
You can do this with a real, personal, trusted guide who supports and processes things with you, while also encouraging you to be free. You are worth real time, and I look forward to accompanying, knowing, and supporting you during it.
-Dr. Michael