Individual Therapy

There are many reasons people begin therapy.

Sometimes something has happened—a relationship has ended, a betrayal has been discovered, a loss has occurred, or life has changed in a way you weren’t prepared for.

Other times, there isn’t a single event you can point to. You may simply feel stuck. The same relationship difficulties keep repeating themselves. You struggle with feelings you can’t seem to resolve. Or you find yourself behaving in ways that don’t entirely make sense to you.

And sometimes the reason for starting therapy is even less defined:

Something in your life doesn’t feel right, but you’re not yet sure what needs to change.

You don’t need to have a clear explanation for your struggles before beginning therapy. Understanding what is happening—and why—is often part of the work.

Looking Beneath the Surface

Psychological symptoms are important, but symptoms don’t tell us the whole story.

Two people can both struggle with anxiety, depression, anger, shame or loneliness and arrive at those feelings through very different paths.

Our emotional lives develop within a history.

The relationships we experienced growing up, the ways we learned to manage difficult feelings, the parts of ourselves that were welcomed or discouraged, experiences of trauma or loss, and the ways we learned to protect ourselves can continue to shape how we experience ourselves and others long after the original circumstances have passed.

Some of these patterns are relatively easy to recognize.

Others operate largely outside of our awareness.

You may know, for example, that you repeatedly choose partners who aren’t good for you without understanding what draws you toward these relationships. You may want greater intimacy while simultaneously pulling away when someone gets too close. You may recognize that anger, shame, anxiety or self-doubt has an outsized influence on your life but find that simply understanding this intellectually hasn’t changed it.

This is where psychotherapy can become particularly useful.

What We Might Work On

I work with adults experiencing a range of emotional and relationship difficulties, including:

• relationship and intimacy difficulties;
• betrayal trauma and the aftermath of infidelity;
• anxiety, depression and persistent self-doubt;
• shame and difficulties with self-esteem;
• childhood trauma and emotional neglect;
• grief and significant loss;
• major life transitions;
• patterns of emotional avoidance or withdrawal;
• difficulties managing anger or other intense emotions;
• secretive, compulsive or self-defeating behavior;
• feeling emotionally stuck or disconnected from yourself;
• repeating relationship patterns that you want to better understand.

This list isn’t exhaustive.

In fact, some people begin therapy without knowing exactly what they want to work on. They know only that something keeps getting in the way of living or relating to others in the way they would like.

Therapy can help us become curious about that something.

Understanding Patterns That Keep Repeating

One of the things that interests me most about psychotherapy is why we sometimes continue doing things that cause us pain—even when part of us desperately wants to change.

We may find ourselves repeatedly entering similar relationships, avoiding difficult conversations, withdrawing when we feel vulnerable, seeking reassurance that never quite reassures us, or engaging in behaviors that conflict with our values.

From the outside, these patterns can look irrational or self-defeating.

But psychological patterns usually developed for a reason.

Ways of coping that create difficulties in adult life may once have helped us manage circumstances, relationships or feelings that we weren’t equipped to handle differently.

Understanding this doesn’t mean resigning ourselves to these patterns. Quite the opposite.

When we become more aware of what is driving our reactions—rather than simply criticizing ourselves for having them—we create the possibility of responding differently.

The Work of Therapy

Psychotherapy offers a kind of space that can be difficult to find elsewhere in life.

Most of us move through the day occupying different roles. We are spouses and partners, parents, children, professionals, caretakers and friends. Each role carries expectations and responsibilities.

Therapy creates an opportunity to step outside of these roles for a while and pay closer attention to your internal experience.

My approach is collaborative and primarily informed by psychodynamic and attachment perspectives, trauma theory, and parts-oriented ways of understanding the mind.

This means that we will pay attention not only to what is happening in your life now, but also to the experiences and relationships that have helped shape the ways you think, feel, protect yourself and connect with others.

At times, therapy may focus on helping you manage an immediate crisis or painful symptoms.

At other times, the work may become more exploratory: understanding longstanding patterns, examining aspects of yourself that have remained outside of awareness, and making connections between your past and the difficulties you are experiencing today.

There isn’t a predetermined path that every person follows.

Therapy should fit the person rather than requiring the person to fit the therapy.

Insight Is Important—but It Isn’t the Entire Goal

Understanding ourselves can be enormously helpful.

But psychotherapy isn’t simply an intellectual exercise.

You can understand perfectly well why you behave in a particular way and still find yourself doing it.

Meaningful change often requires something more: becoming able to notice old emotional patterns as they are occurring, tolerate feelings that previously felt intolerable, respond differently to vulnerability, and develop a different relationship with parts of yourself you may have spent years avoiding or criticizing.

Over time, the goal is not simply greater self-knowledge.

It is greater freedom.

The freedom to respond to the present rather than automatically repeating the past.

Beginning Individual Therapy

You don’t need to be in crisis to begin therapy. And you don’t need to know exactly what you want therapy to accomplish.

Sometimes we begin with a very specific problem.

Sometimes we begin with a question.

And sometimes we begin with the feeling that the way you’ve been living, coping or relating to others is no longer working for you.

Wherever you are starting, we can begin there.

Richard Nicastro, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist with three decades of experience working with individuals and couples. His work is informed by psychodynamic and attachment theory, trauma theory, and parts-oriented approaches to psychotherapy. Dr. Nicastro is licensed in Connecticut and Texas and provides teletherapy to clients in participating PSYPACT states.

Interested in working with Dr. Nicastro?

To inquire about individual therapy or schedule an initial consultation, email Rich@RichardNicastro.com