Individual Psychotherapy for Adults – Online Psychological Therapy 

Areas of Specialization

I work with various disorders and difficulties, including:

• Emotional crisis,
• Communication problems,
• Anxiety disorders,
• Cultural adaptation issues,
• Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) syndrome,
• Grief,
• Panic attacks,
• Trauma,
• Sexual trauma,
• Being a victim of violence,
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),
• Adult Children from Dysfunctional Families (ACDF) syndrome,
• Neuroses,
• Crisis intervention,
• Female sexual disorders,
• Insecurity,
• Personality disorders,
• Boundary issues,
• Desire for self-discovery,
• Rich child syndrome.

The above difficulties can be adjusted to psychological help that will effectively support the person. This will include:

Trauma Psychotherapy

Characteristics of Therapy

It is a psychotherapeutic process that usually requires a longer period of meetings (from 2 to even 10 years), but with less frequency. The main streams of psychotherapy that deal with this type of difficulty include psychoanalysis or psychodynamic psychotherapy.

People who come for psychotherapy suffer from such traumas as: alcoholic illness of either parent or loved ones, being a victim of pathological patterns of behavior and communication in the family, or violence from loved ones or the environment. They sometimes experience social exclusion (scapegoat syndrome), their lives are marked by loss (not necessarily the death of a loved one), or they have been exposed to a huge number of external factors that threaten their lives. All these problems are often accompanied by psychosomatic issues.

Purpose of Therapy

The base for healing is to return to past memories, to fulfill the need to share and weep the trauma, but also to internally overcome the abusers by increasing their life forces and making better choices in life.

All of this allows one to move beyond the pattern of trauma, which remains unconsciously in the minds of victims and children from dysfunctional families for many years. Such people must know their vulnerable places, leave the trauma as a learned and cared chapter in their lives, and make an absolute decision of NEVER AGAIN. This is why this kind of therapy takes a long time and requires a lot of energy from patients. After some time, the wings clipped by trauma can grow back and be strong regardless of the injuries and harm suffered.

During trauma psychotherapy, I am primarily concerned with creating a base for people who are too emotionally fragile at a particular time in their lives to undertake a deeper type of psychotherapy (psychoanalysis or psychodynamic psychotherapy), but who want to begin such a process in the future. It also provides an opportunity to continue with long-term psychotherapy, but already under different conditions.

That’s why it’s a good idea to start from the base, because it strengthens the basic emotional and mental structures, which makes it possible not to be afraid of confronting and naming problems. People who are able to talk openly about their problems complete psychotherapeutic processes much faster. Sometimes it takes up to a year or two of psychotherapy to accomplish the act of naming a particular problem itself.

Crisis Intervention

Methodology

It’s a form of short-term support that involves listening to the patient and providing quick therapeutic interventions so that the patient can cope with the crisis response to the event. It is a base for finding points of support when something sudden or unexpected happens.

Interventional Systemic– Cultural Psychotherapy

Introduction to the Method

The method takes the base very seriously, and its goal is to intervene by giving the patient individually tailored guidelines to deal with the situation and his own reaction. With the implementation of these guidelines, the patient will be able to start long-term or short-term psychotherapy, as his emotional state will already be more stable (learn more about the ISCP method).

The recommended type of therapy once the crisis is stabilized is psychoanalysis, psychodynamic-humanistic psychotherapy or cognitive-behavioral or Gestalt therapy. They allow the patient to learn to think without the habits that emerged during the crisis situation.

Sometimes one works strictly on emotions and impressions (Gestalt), tasks (CBT) or seeks a way out of the crisis in a more intrapsychic way: teaching how to live without the crisis (psychoanalysis, psychodynamic-humanistic psychotherapy), to know oneself again without the crisis or to understand the nature of the crisis (existential therapy).

ISCP psychotherapy also allows the patient to find his own guidelines to increase his crisis resistance and safety base, recognize coping strategies, get to know the crisis and himself in crisis. It can also develop into long-term psychotherapy.

Support for People from Different Cultures

Ethnopsychotherapy

Cultural psychotherapy (ethnopsychotherapy) is a form of assistance to clarify and diagnose problems resulting from cultural differences. It deals with cultural adaptation problems, culture shock, religious psychoses, coping with cultural differences, relationships with people from other cultures or otherwise diagnosed mental disorders with a cultural basis.

Specifics of Cultural Problems

The patient’s issues often involve feelings of rejection, humiliation or being treated as a kind of exotic in a new country or even a city far removed from their place of origin. There are also communication problems associated with different ways of expressing oneself.

Challenges Associated with Change of Environment 

With a change of environment, the patient may be exposed to extremely high levels of stress, jetlag, sleep problems or fear of people or communication in another language. Not every person develops the enthusiasm associated with appreciating the advantages of another culture, the so-called honeymoon period.

Cultural psychoeducation suggests several meetings to explain to the patient important issues related to functioning in the new environment and to teach the patient how to do so.

Cultural Psychoeducation 

Psychotherapeutic support for people from other cultures are meetings that can take the form of support groups, but with less frequency. In a new place, such people tend to lack support because they are not established in the social system, or, for example, there are cultural differences in social relations (say, issues of gifts or visits).

Cultural psychotherapy is a form of therapeutic assistance with cultural differences (in fact, psychotherapy conducted in another language can already be called cultural psychotherapy).

The Role of Ethnopsychotherapy 

Ethnopsychotherapy presupposes the therapist’s knowledge of cultural differences at the level of approach to mental health and knowledge of a different understanding of various disorders. It also presupposes his openness to various forms of additional help and his willingness to cooperate with doctors treating the disorder according to the knowledge of their culture.

Psychotherapy with the ISCP Method in Cultural Contexts

ISCP method psychotherapy is able to effectively help in each of these areas, within the scope of cultural psychoeducation, support for people with cultural differences, cultural psychotherapy. It was created precisely on the basis of my interests and studies in cultural psychology and psychology of religion, as well as ethnopsychiatry.

Psychotherapeutic Support for Women

Sexual Disorders and Boundary Problems

It is important to be able to talk openly and without embarrassment about various women’s difficulties, which are also culturally and socially associated with misunderstood taboos or beliefs. Women can learn femininity only from observation and imitation. However, it is difficult for them to look for examples worthy of emulation, because they are surrounded by myths about sacrifice – that they have to get used to pain, there is no place for such a thing as comfort in life, they can not rely on the support of men.

Maternity Planning and Body Image

Focusing on issues related to maternity planning and problems associated with the perception of one’s own body and women’s roles.

Cultural and Social Contexts

Considering women’s difficulties in a cultural and social context, including discussions of taboos and beliefs about femininity.

Challenges in Building a Relationship

Women do not have points of support, which is further disturbed by, among other things, external structures (in Poland, there is, at the level of building male-female relationships, a culture of violence and a culture of rape, as a fact operating in the social mentality, which is further amplified historically and by customs). It is still difficult to talk about sexuality, which is, after all, the quintessence of the body, like sensuality. You don’t have to be sexually active to be sexual.

Length and Effectiveness of Therapy

Psychotherapy using the ISCP method makes it possible to select appropriate guidelines for the patient that give them support and allow them to conduct psychotherapeutic assistance, which in the case of pregnancy planning or pregnancy itself may not be confrontational psychotherapy. It is individually tailored.

Psychoeducation

This is a method that should give the patient maximum support in the form of knowledge and diagnosis of difficulties within a few meetings. Many people who do not participate in psychotherapy are helpless in situations when something unexpected happens, such as with a loved one. They don’t know how to help them, what kind of attitude to have, where to look for help, what psychotherapy is all about or how medications prescribed by a psychiatrist work or what side effects they may have.

Long-term Psychotherapy

It’s a form of psychotherapeutic help that usually lasts from 3 to 5.5 years. It focuses on the mechanisms reproduced within personality disorders, which are usually combined with other types of disorders. It is focused on confronting and encouraging new forms of responding to different situations in order to move beyond established behavioral patterns.

Personality disorders are fostered by fixed constructs of behavior and experiences that the patient repeats over and over again. Psychotherapy forces the patient to leave them. It is very mentally demanding for the patient until new behavioral mechanisms are established that are not self-destructive or destructive to others.

Disorders of this type arise through long-term exposure to crisis or trauma. They can also be related to situations where the environment of the affected individuals has led them into a state of learned helplessness or kept them from maturing into gender or social roles. Such people are often “stuck in time” and easily fall back into their behavioral loops.

Psychotherapy with the ISCP Method for Personality Disorders

Psychotherapy with the ISCP method creates a base for people with severe disorders (but cannot be considered a substitute for hospitalization), so that they can then continue psychotherapy based more on confrontation and bearing the frustration of the psychotherapeutic relationship.

ISCP gives support and guidance on how not to harm oneself and an understanding of what psychotherapy really is. It also shows boundaries in relationships with others and explains the mechanisms that a person reproduces.

For people with personality disorders, psychotherapy using the ISCP method can last a maximum of 2 years after renegotiating the contract (with the possibility of negotiating the rate to a lower one after a year). It is not recommended to continue with this method of psychotherapy after 2 years, it is best to take a break and continue psychotherapy with another method (psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychodynamic-humanistic psychotherapy, CBT).

Psychotherapy is a process focused on a certain freedom, self-exploration and often breaking conventions. This is what psychotherapy is in the humanistic, transcendental or existential and Jungian sense, among others, and to some extent CBT (so-called transgressions).

Psychoanalysis also gives a grounding in this, but however, it grew more out of an understanding of deep personality disorders. Psychotherapy with a focus on self-realization is for people who want to understand their potential and find possible ways to realize it.

In addition to psychotherapy, there are also such forms of assistance as development workshops, coaching, and mentoring. Psychotherapy with the ISCP method is also built on these methods, but works with slightly different techniques.

Psychotherapy for Self-Realization

Humanistic and Existential Approach

In psychotherapy focused on self-realization, it is important to stick to Maslow’s Pyramid. First we find ourselves at a given level of functioning, and then we consider what needs to change to reach the desired level. The goal could be good relationships with people or self-development. The ways to achieve it are different, as everyone realizes their potential uniquely. It is also the search for happiness or pleasure in life (this is what Positive Psychology refers to). Psychotherapy with the ISCP method allows and such form of psychotherapeutic work, helping to realize the above goals.