Ariel Axelrod, LMHC

The problems that lead us to seek therapy are not as clear-cut as what sends us off to a medical specialist. People reach out because something is off or wrong or just doesn’t sit right. Perhaps you have noticed that something isn’t working, or plans are not going as planned.

Therapy serves as a well-accepted practice for solving such quandaries. At its heart, it is an opportunity to reflect on present situations and relationships, with yourself, with others, and with the world around you. 

As an aside, the reason why efforts to describe therapy wax poetical and philosophical really rest on the difficulty of talking in succinct terms about talk therapy. John Donne’s famous, “No man is an island,” is a useful springboard for such an endeavor, and this makes therapy into a kind of interpersonal cartography.

Where are you on the map of your lived experience? We can map the archipelago. Where are the dragons? We can describe their existence and their reasons for being. Does such a nature preempt understanding? Can they speak? Reflect? Remember? And with such understanding, what shall you do next? Therapy is a place to (re)draw the map and turn experience into insight.