Understanding Psychotherapy

If you’ve made it this far on a website for Lake Oswego counseling, you probably hope to gain a better understanding of how working with a therapist will make a positive difference in your life, and help you make better decisions about the suffering you experience daily.

Let’s first start with how I see you: You are a capable person, with many examples of making challenging and satisfying decisions throughout your life. You have struggled, thought, planned and corrected your path on many occasions before you came to see me. You have probably been working on the problems that are frustrating and discouraging you now for many months, if not years. You are persistent, but discouraged, and remain eager to learn something new. You have been resilient before, but may fear you are losing your resiliency and hope. You have friends and family that want you to get the help and support you need.

Now, what to do?  

What I do as a Lake Oswego therapist is rooted in the training I have received and my 30 years of experience helping patients. I see you as a person with a history; one where you have learned from parents and friends how to understand yourself and your place in the world around you. Sometimes, that results in seeing yourself in limited, even hopeless ways. I will endeavor to see you in the context of your early training, while understanding your current relationships and current coping skills. Occasionally, what we have been taught and what we have learned, doesn’t help us deal with depression, trauma, anxiety, or addiction. As a therapist, my job is to notice how your pain is connected to the world around you, understand why your current coping strategies have proven ineffective, and to challenge you to experiment with new solutions until you find the ones that work the best.

I see you as a person with a body; your biology can drive much of your suffering, especially if you don’t understand how your body works. Depression, trauma, and anxiety are not just activities of the mind, they are rooted in the body. Understanding how the body influences depression, trauma, and anxiety can greatly help a person find helpful strategies to overcome these conditions. Addictions are also heavily influenced by the body’s adaptation; cravings, obsessions, and compulsions to drink or use seemingly “crazy” or “irrational” unless you fully understand how the body begins to drive the mind to meet the need of addictions.

I see you as a person with a future. Long before you met me, you have been working on a life agenda. You have some place you want to be and people you want to share that vision with. You are likely in my office seeking counseling in Lake Oswego because you are afraid that vision is in jeopardy. My job is to remind you of your vision, to help you either get on track by resolving your symptoms or by helping you form a better vision of a more realistic, satisfying, and rewarding future. While working together, we will often have to address very difficult topics, experiences, and events. That takes courage. While doing that, we will always keep one hand on Hope as we envision a better future.

In the end, we are a team. I am a specialist you are consulting to help you have a higher quality of life. Depression, anxiety, past trauma, and addictions all drain hope and happiness from life.  Through our work you will become more competent in these challenges, more confident in your ability to heal and grow, and more hopeful about the future you are actively building. Ready to begin?

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Contact Us / Our Location

David E. Blakeslee, Psy.D., P.C.
415 N. State Street #136
Lake Oswego, OR 97034

Phone: (503) 699-8389
Billing Questions: [email protected]