Psychotherapy at its best helps people get their power back. What do I mean by power? Well when a baby is born, they appear to have no power. They can not roll over or even move their heads. All they can do is cry. And like any good parent can tell you, that cry is enough to make that child the most powerful person in the house. The baby knows how to get its needs met.
Even up until two or three, many times when a child of this age enters a room of adults, they do it with great self confidence as if to say, here I am you lucky people. Unfortunately, as a child ages, he or she starts to come up against issues they cannot control. It could be an abusive parent, a bully or not being able to do well in school. These traumas start to add up and a child starts to lose his or her power or self confidence. The amount of power lost depends on how devastating the trauma and what kind of support the child is given to help them cope with the trauma.
By the time a person reaches adulthood, he or she has established coping mechanisms to deal with the lost power. These come in the form of addictions of various types, defense mechanisms, strong emotions such as anger and sadness, and acting out behaviors to name a few. When these coping mechanisms no longer work, many times people end up in psychotherapy. And I postulate that good psychotherapy helps give people their lost power back so they can return to the self confidence they had as a baby.
