Body Psychotherapy, Counselling and Therapy: Let’s have some Clarity

Let’s start with the most known form: counselling. Usually, it is short term, and the client brings a specific problem she wants to work on. On the other hand, it might be a highly complex issue, and the client might require longer to feel better. In a counselling session, the counsellor and the client talk through the problem, and the counsellor helps the client better understand what patterns the client cannot process by herself. Usually, Counselling is very helpful in dealing with short-term emotional problems. A bad breakup. A redundancy. A sudden loss.

Psychotherapy goes deeper. When you agree to attend psychotherapy sessions, it’s usually a much longer commitment. Through psychotherapy, clients learn to deal with the root cause of problems.

If we go back to the breakup example of before, you learn to deal with the pain while attending counselling; through psychotherapy, you learn the cause of why you picked a determined person.

Body psychotherapy is very close to psychotherapy because it deals with the root cause of the problems. However, what makes it unique is how it involves the body. While psychotherapy and counselling focus on the talk, body psychotherapy let the body do the talking.  Let’s return for a moment to the breakup example. By approaching this from a body psychotherapy perspective, we explore the pain and the heartache from a rational point and the impact that those had on your body. You might come to realise how you have stopped yourself from breathing fully after such an experience, thus decreasing your chances of living a full and happy life.

Going through body psychotherapy is an experience that can help anyone gain a better and deeper understanding of their emotional life. Still, it is also a way of exploring the inner workings of the body. Sometimes people are afraid of going to therapy as they “don’t know what to talk about” after a few sessions. If this is the case, a different approach might appeal. The body knows and shows what emotional problems we encounter in life. A body psychotherapy approach can offer an opportunity to deeply listen to that parts of yourself that might have been overlooked in the past.