"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child." Carl Jung

If, when, you look back at a stressful time in your life, check to see where even only moments of warmth and kindness touched you. If you find those moments, remember and build on those gifts to your soul that helped you survive.

A shelf in my office in front of a window.

Using dream analysis and guided imagery methodology, you can dialogue with your obstacles and discover opportunities. Here’s an example that gives both sides of your dilemma a voice.

Virtual psychotherapy is now the standard way of delivering services. If you've been in therapy and switch from seeing your therapist in person to seeing her online or on Facetime you may miss the personal presence and setting.  But you are grateful that your work continues with the person you trust and with whom you have developed a history.

If you are new to psychotherapy or new to the psychotherapist you are considering, what's it like to start work online? Your questions may include: 

1. What's it like to be with this person?
2. How will I feel with her?
3. I get a sense of a person when I am with them. How will I get that sense over a monitor?
4. I need support and warmth. Isn't virtual psychotherapy cold?
5. How can I share intimate personal information to a stranger on a screen?
6. How can she know me if she just sees my face on a screen?
7. What happens in online psychotherapy?
8. I need help. Can this kind of therapy work?

Shadows of the mind. Light and darkness. Active and passive. More in our depths that we can develop and use than we know.

People usually come to psychotherapy for the first time because they are in pain, bewildered and because everything they knew about problem solving no longer works for them. Going inside their psyches seems like the last option. Even then, they do not know what to expect. At first, they want to know how long it will take to fix their lives.

This is a normal response when a person is plunged into an unrecognizable