The main focus in therapy is to understand how you relate to yourself. While this may sound simple or obvious, the truth is that many people are much more aware of how they relate to others than of the subtle or not so subtle ways in which they relate to themselves.

The main reason why a person is relatively unaware of how he relates to himself is that many ways of experiencing himself have become automatic. From early childhood, each person incorporates and internalizes elements of how he experiences life and how others relate to him. Gradually, over years, these elements coalesce into patterned ways of experiencing himself in various spheres of life. Therapy can be extremely helpful in enlarging awareness of the negative and self-limiting attitudes and feelings toward himself.

How you relate to yourself is the foundation of how you live your life. By increasing your understanding of your life story and the very significant causes underlying your attitudes and feelings, you can gradually increase your compassion for yourself. Compassion is the key ingredient to becoming an effective ally of yourself and providing an emotionally solid homebase.

What is Video Therapy?

Video therapy is a tool which harnesses the best of technology to enhance the process and progress of psychotherapy.

Video therapy consists of taping and viewing psychotherapy sessions to provide vivid, real-life, present-moment feedback to clients to help them understand feelings and dimensions of themselves otherwise hard to access.

How Does Video Therapy Work?

Target issue: First, based on my understanding of a client, I suggest a particular issue for a discussion to be videotaped. I target issues that are currently sources of conflict, and feelings that are largely outside of their awareness.

Videotape client: After establishing a level of comfort and flow in our discussion, I will start videotaping the client, using a video camera mounted on a tripod to my side. The camera is approximately 6-7 feet away from the client, and since we are discussing an issue of significance, most people are almost immediately unaware of the camera’s presence andable to retain their focus on our discussion.

Playback/Viewing of Videotape: After taping approximately 5-10 minutes of our discussion, we watch the playback together, either straight through or pausing at moments chosen by the client to discuss. Universally, clients are profoundly moved by viewing themselves talking from a deep, heart-felt place. It’s as if they didn’t know they felt so much and the level of acceptance and understanding is accelerated by this fuller viewing of their deep humanity.

How Can Video Therapy Help You?

The main goal of all psychotherapy is to enhance your relationship with YourSELF.

Video enables you to meet yourself -face-to-face – in the present moment.

Video gives you the opportunity to stand back and reflect on what you see, hear, feel, and realize about the person on the screen – YourSELF.

When you meet the real you - face-to-face - you will realize on a deep emotional level:

#1 -that some of the views of yourself that you have carried around for a lifetime may not be accurate. This emotional EUREKA moment greatly expands your sense of possibility about change and your belief that you can grow to feel better about yourself, specifically, that you could grow to really like the person you are today.

#2 – that you are working hard and struggling to overcome the difficulties of your life, and you begin to feel compassion for yourself.

Overall, you begin to resonate with the feelings connected with your lifestory, and you become fundamentally more attuned to YourSELF.

The value of being attuned to your inner self is described best by the prominent scholar of neuroscience and mindfulness, Daniel Siegel:

“this internal attunement with our primary self …yields the powerful feeling of coming home.

As poets have so often urged us to consider,

we live so far from this person who has loved us for so long

but has been so blindly ignored:

our primary self.”

How is Video Therapy Different from Traditional Talk Therapy?

Keep in mind that video therapy is a tool used within a larger psychotherapeutic process. The strength of video therapy is that it rests on working with literal, immediate images. Images are much more powerful than words, they hold much more information than words, and convey that information at a much more rapid pace.

Images are the fluid language of the mind.

What do Clients Say?

“I just finished watching today’s taping…..it’s just so very powerful ….my path toward self love continues, I really like myself.

You were amazing – your questioning –it’s just so perfect - the pacing of it, the content of the questions….. when the camera is on wow you really led me to epiphanies and discoveries… I feel very grateful. it’s such a lovely tape, a treasure. It’s a big step today, so thank you for bringing your camera into the therapy sessions. it’s just so, so very powerful.”

“So many people really can’t tell what they are feeling. This really helps me know what I am feeling.

“Just wanted to pass on to you my early reaction to having watched yesterday’s session –What a rich session and thank you again for suggesting this bringing this technology into my therapy it’s so amazing because it’s so accessible and easy to manage the technology that is and it just gives so much- captures so much -conveys so much. I see myself talking through these issues that have been so longstanding and limiting, to see the expressions on my face and to understand and recall what I was feeling when I was talking with you about it. It’s just very very powerful. “

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