Individual therapy is a process in which inner conflicts that cause emotional impasses or confusion in a person are expressed with the guidance of a therapist, identified, and reinterpreted in line with these new definitions.
When a person puts their impasses or the confusions they struggle to make sense of into words aloud, they actually redefine what they could not make sense of and, together with these new definitions, confront the real conflicts.
Within the life cycle, a person may pass through various turning points; at these turning points, they may see that the values and thoughts they had placed somewhere up to that time have reached a dead end, or they may become alienated from themselves. Individual therapies are precisely the steering wheel of this process lived between the remnants of the past and anxieties about the future.
What Is Individual Therapy?
Individual therapy is a one-to-one process aimed at resolving the impasses or confusions a person experiences by proceeding from the person’s own individual dynamics.
The main aim of individual therapy is to enable the person to speak under suitable conditions and, accordingly, to carry out evaluations directed toward the person, so that the necessary treatment can be implemented for the source of the problem or problems. Impasses or situations that cannot be overcome often appear as unspoken elements. As long as the person cannot articulate them, they try to live with these impasses, and the complex process becomes a vicious cycle and repeats itself. With the phrase “Unexpressed emotions never die. They are buried alive and come forth later in uglier ways,” Freud actually emphasizes the importance of expression in the individual’s world. In this respect, individual therapy can be defined as a form of practice that offers the person an opportunity to express themselves in a healthy way and thus aims to create healthy individuals.
Depending on the evaluations of the elements observed in the person and the person’s needs, individual therapies may be in-depth and exploratory, supportive and repressive, behavioral, and directive in nature.
What Is the Aim of Individual Therapy?
Individual therapy fundamentally aims to treat psychological problems or impasses that emerge in a person for various reasons by activating the person’s own individual dynamics. In line with this basic aim, we can list the practices carried out by individual therapy as follows:
- The foremost aim is for the person to know themselves; in situations where we think we know ourselves, in fact, at the basis of all impasses and confusions there may be not knowing ourselves sufficiently. Individual therapy is like a journey a person takes into their inner world. This journey can be both the solution to ongoing problems that seem unsolvable and the key to a happier life in which the person feels more satisfaction. Individual therapy is an inner-world journey that proceeds as the person revisits, expresses, and reconstructs their meanings. The most important and effective element of this journey is the therapist who accompanies the individual with the purpose of listening to and understanding them.
- Helping the individual notice the contradictions within themselves; constitutes one of the aims of individual therapy. Knowing oneself actually forms the basis for noticing one’s own contradictions. By expressing, the individual actually gets to know themselves again, and by getting to know themselves again, they notice one by one the inner contradictions underlying the problems experienced.
- Understanding one’s own needs; brings with it an effective and successful resolution through individual therapy. Understanding one’s unfinished or unmet wishes and needs is key in terms of identifying the source of the confusion and eliminating the ongoing impasse. Individual dynamics can be activated only in line with the person knowing themselves, noticing their contradictions, and becoming aware of their needs.
Who Applies for Individual Therapy and Why?
Individual therapy is based on the foundation that the individual—the smallest link in today’s rapidly developing chain structure—should be healthy and happy. A healthy and happy individual ensures that the foundations of all social and communicational structures are solid. In this respect, individual therapy aims to enable the individual to find their own path in the flow of life, where confusions and impasses are inevitable.
Individual therapy is the process of building the ability to look from new and different windows in the face of certain situations that cause emotional confusion and mental impasses in a person. In this regard, we can list the elements that strain and leave a person dissatisfied as follows:
- People who experience communication problems; the most basic quality of the human being is the ability to communicate, which is necessary to survive and to establish healthy social bonds. People with communication problems fundamentally need to understand themselves. Individual therapy enables the person to understand themselves, make sense of their inner contradictions, and thus become aware of their needs. Individual therapy aims to create a new window for people who experience communication problems.
- Spouse selection, marital problems; stem from people not knowing themselves fully and correctly in the first place. Marriage and choosing a spouse are among the most important decisions taken in life; such decisions taken by an individual who does not know themselves can lead to serious problems. Likewise, marriage can also come to mean problems that arise over time. Individual therapy has an important place for reconsidering and reconstructing vital decisions such as marriage and spouse selection.
- Family-related problems; constitute the subject of family therapy as well as individual therapy. A family can function healthily in line with the happiness of each of its members. Individual therapy has an important place for the health and happiness of each individual in the family.
- People with relationship problems; can focus on common solutions to problems by getting to know themselves again through their problems. Individual therapy enables people with relationship problems to reconstruct themselves again through their relationships and the problems within their relationships.
- People who have problems related to business life; actually constitute the most common problems of our age. Starting from the fundamental point of strengthening the person’s communication skills, individual therapy aims to create healthy functioning in all relationships.
