Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

Online Therapy
01273 921 355
  • Home
  • Therapy Services
    • Fees
    • How Psychotherapy Works
    • Who is it for?
    • Individual Therapy
    • Child Therapy
    • Couples Therapy
    • Marriage Counselling
    • Family Therapy
    • Group Psychotherapy
    • Corporate Counselling and Therapy Services
    • Clinical Supervision
    • FAQs
  • Types of Therapy
    • Acceptance Commitment Therapy
    • Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Body Psychotherapy
    • Clinical Psychology
    • Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
    • Compassion Focused Therapy
    • Coronavirus (Covid-19) Counselling
    • Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
    • EMDR
    • Existential Psychotherapy
    • Gestalt Psychotherapy
    • Group Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Integrative Psychotherapy
    • IPT – Interpersonal Psychotherapy
    • Non-Violent Resistance (NVR)
    • Online Therapy
    • Psychoanalytic Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy
    • Systemic Psychotherapy
    • Transactional Analysis
    • Trauma Psychotherapy
  • Types of Issues
    • Abuse
    • Addiction
      • Gambling addiction
      • Porn Addiction
    • Affairs
    • Anger Management
    • Anxiety
    • Bereavement Counselling
    • Coronavirus Induced Mental Health Issues
    • Cross Cultural Issues
    • Depression
    • Family Issues
    • LGBT+ Issues
    • Low Self-Esteem
    • Relationship Issues
    • Sexual Issues
    • Stress
  • Online Therapy
    • Online Anger Management Therapy
    • Online Anxiety Counselling
    • Online Bereavement Therapy
    • Online Depression Psychotherapy
    • Online Relationship Therapy
  • Our Practitioners
    • Practitioner Search
  • Work with us
  • Blog
    • Ageing
    • Attachment
    • Child Development
    • Families
    • Gender
    • Groups
    • Loss
    • Mental Health
    • Neuroscience
    • Parenting
    • Psychotherapy
    • Relationships
    • Sexuality
    • Sleep
    • Society
    • Spirituality
    • Work
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Us – Brighton & Hove Practice
    • Contact Us – Lewes Practice
    • Contact Us – Online Therapy
    • Privacy Policy

January 1, 2018 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

Is starting psychotherapy a good New Year’s Resolution?

Most of us make some sort of New Year’s resolution, whether overtly or covertly.  The new year can feel like an opportunity to put the past behind us and to start afresh.

Whether or not we actively name and own our New Year’s resolutions, most of us can also attest to the best held intentions for change slipping away. There are plenty of good reasons why New Year’s resolutions don’t work. We are often too unspecific in what would constitute change, and it can be hard to make change on our own.

Psychotherapy is about change.  However, the start of all change comes from inside. To make change, we need to understand ourselves and accept why we have made the decisions we have. Nothing is random.

Psychotherapy is first and foremost about learning to have a relationship with ourselves and to learn to hold ourselves in mind, often in ways others failed to do when we were growing up. When we hold ourselves in mind, we can objectively evaluate if something is helpful or in our best interests.

We learn to hold ourselves in mind through others holding us in mind. This is one of the main roles of a psychotherapist. Holding a client in mind is far broader and deeper than simply making notes and remembering what they told us. It is about having a relationship with them and helping them to understand their blind spots, their relational patterns to themselves and to others. Helping them work through this is the therapeutic encounter.

Psychotherapy is often hard. Keeping to a weekly day and time when we meet with our psychotherapist can feel like a slog. Unlike a New Year’s resolution, the process is held relationally. Your psychotherapist makes the time and space available to hold you in mind and expects you to show up for the weekly dialogue. Even if you do not attend, your therapist is there to hold you in mind.

Perhaps the question is not so much whether psychotherapy is a good New Year’s resolution. Rather, it may be whether you are committed to having a deeper and more meaningful relationship with yourself, and through this, learning to hold yourself better in mind. The latter will lead to long-lasting changes on a profound level which may or may not include more frequent trips to the gym!

Happy New Year from all of us at Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy.

Mark Vahrmeyer is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist working in private practice in Hove and Lewes, East Sussex. He is trained in relational psychotherapy and uses an integrative approach of psychodynamic, attachment and body psychotherapy to facilitate change with clients.

Further Reading

New Year Reflections

How psychotherapy works

What is psychotherapy?

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire
Facebooktwitter

Filed Under: Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy, Mark Vahrmeyer, Psychotherapy Tagged With: habit, Psychotherapy

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Find your practitioner

loader
Wordpress Meta Data and Taxonomies Filter

Locations -

  • Brighton
  • Lewes
  • Online
loader
loader
loader
loader
loader

Search for your practitioner by location

Brighton
Lewes

Therapy services +

Therapy services: 

Therapy types

Therapy types: 

Our Practitioners

  • Mark Vahrmeyer
  • Sam Jahara
  • Gerry Gilmartin
  • Dr Simon Cassar
  • Claire Barnes
  • David Work
  • Angela Rogers
  • Dorothea Beech
  • Paul Salvage
  • Susanna Petitpierre
  • Sharon Spindler
  • Kevin Collins
  • Rebecca Mead
  • Dr John Burns
  • Georgie Leake
  • Fiona Downie

Search our blog

Work with us

Find out more….

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Copyright © 2021 – Brighton And Hove Psychotherapy – Privacy Policy
6 The Drive, Hove , East Sussex, BN3 3JA.

COVID-19 (CORONAVIRUS) Important Notice

We would like to reassure all our clients that Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is operating as normal despite the current situation.

Our working practices have fully incorporated online therapy in addition to a re-opening of our Hove and Lewes practices for face-to-face psychotherapy in accordance with Government guidelines and advice on safe practice and social distancing.