People come into therapy seeking help for many different reasons. At the centre of every complaint, however, is how the person feels and the need for change—they feel bad and they want to feel better.
Answering the question of why a person feels the way they do and how to change, is a complex task, because there are many factors, underlying processes, and behaviours involved.
Change first requires understanding our feelings and the factors involved, and identify which factors are casual and which are symptomatic. We don’t want to get stuck trying to change something that is continually being created by a deeper process. We need to focus our change efforts on those factors that will actually produce good results.
In general, we will see that we’re unhappy because we have problems or dissatisfactions with aspects of our life and self, and usually these are caused by our behaviours and choices. And then at a deeper level, we will usually see that these life situation, choices, behaviours, and feelings are symptoms of how we think and feeling about our self, how we respond to, cope, and express our feelings, and what has happened to us in the past.
These deeper processes will likely need to be changed before behaviours, life situation, and feelings can improve.