Blog #1 June 4th, 2025

“The Hardest Path is the Easiest”

Many of my clients have tried short-term therapy through their Employee Assistance Programs (almost always strictly short-term manualized CBT treatment) or other therapy modalities that solely focus on developing “symptom management” coping skills or grounding skills. 

Though important, coping and grounding skills only temporarily help to contain your triggered symptoms. However, if and when you are triggered again, your symptoms (e.g., anxiety, depression, anger, avoid, spiraling) will resurface because short term therapy modalities largely emphasize symptom management skills, not changing of core beliefs that causes these symptoms.  What is often lacking in short term therapy is understanding in depth the real life experiences that lead to the development of one’s maladaptive core beliefs, and changing them through a relationship, not homework assignments.

In therapy with me, we work together to reconstruct your old core beliefs. What’s the mechanism of change? The use of the therapeutic relationship to change your core beliefs. It is in the context of the therapeutic relationship, where “corrective emotional” experiences lead way to new core beliefs.

Based on large clinical research findings, the average it takes to discard, restructure and form new enduring core beliefs, can take ~1-3 years (longer if there was trauma involved in one’s development).

Citations:

Clark, D. A., & Beck, A. T. (2010). Cognitive theory and therapy of anxiety and depression: Convergence with neurobiological findings. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(9), 418–424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.06.007

Bamelis, L. L. M., Evers, S. M. A. A., Spinhoven, P., & Arntz, A. (2014). Results of a multicenter randomized controlled trial of the clinical effectiveness of schema therapy for personality disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry, 171(3), 305–322. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2013.12040518

Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98–109. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018378