Integrating Holistic Psychotherapy and Western Psychology for Deep Personal Healing and Evolution

Perspectives is built on the premise that we all have an internal wisdom, an internal beauty and that if we are helped to see those things and to explore those things in ourselves, then we grow, we evolve, we heal and then we're able to go out into the world and make a difference like we really want to. I am Laurie Patrice and I am the founder and the director at Perspectives Center for Holistic Therapy. I started Perspectives a number of years ago because I wanted to do something different in the world of psychotherapy. I come from a background that has involved my working in inpatient facilities, it's involved my being in the school system, its involved a lot of different kinds of arts and what I became aware of as a psychotherapist was that when people come for therapy, the therapist often talks with them about what they're thinking or what they're feeling but doesn't really take into account all the other aspects of who that person and because of that we can be helpful but if we have more information about what your spiritual beliefs are, what your relationships are like, what your health is like, lots of different things about you then we're able to be more helpful. And so I began integrating a more holistic approach to treatment as a way to support people more thoroughly and as I did this I found that there are other clinicians who also were very interested in this approach. And so I began to sort of gather people around me who wanted to do this same kind of work and what happened when we did that is we found this synergy that became Perspectives. And Perspectives has been a big part of my heart and a big part of my life for many years. It allows me to show up for people where they are and to help them grow and evolve and then it also helps me do the same things with my clinicians that I supervise. And so all of us are growing and learning and evolving. And as our clients heal, as our clients grow, as our clients thrive we have a greater sense of our point and purpose in the world. So it's a really mutually beneficial relationship. One of the other things about Perspectives that I really enjoy is that all of us there are really rooted in what you would consider sort of a western psychology model. So we've got the basics set up for that. We know all of things that they teach you in school. In addition to that, we are also interested in cutting edge ways to increase our efficacy to enhance a client's experience when they come to us and so you'll see that a lot of our clinicians have training in lots of different areas that you might not typically see at a psychotherapy practice. Interview people get to know them, we've also had an intern program where we kind of raised our own therapists and so what we have is this experience of Perspectives of clinicians who are very different in their personalities and in their interest levels but who share the core beliefs around seeing people at their highest good believing that people have their own answers if they're given the right circumstances in which to work, believing that if we give people tools they can be more effective in the way they move through the world and that there's just a general need for more kindness and light in the world. Everybody who's at Perspectives is that kind of light in the world and they're beautiful and wonderful people to work with professionally as my colleagues and they're also beautiful and wonderful people to work with if they happen to be your therapist. So much of the time I think we walk through the world sleepwalking and the time that we have with our therapist is a time that we get to wake up, it's a time that we get to look at things that we just took for granted and sort it out and say, what's still working for me? What's not working for me? Why do I believe this? Why am I having internal conflict? Because I believe this and then I believe this and they don't jive and so the kind of folks that we work with tend to be people who are interested in understanding where they're going, why they're doing, what they're doing, how they can contribute to the world. And they just need somebody to kind of be with them to help them unpack that, evaluate it, chew on it a little bit and then decide what they want to do with it.