Mark Isajiw

I truly believe that engaging in therapy with someone is a great privilege. If you think about it, therapy is kind of a weird concept. A person walks in off the street, maybe after a referral from a doctor or someone they trust, and begins to tell a complete stranger about their innermost thoughts and feelings. It seems to go against basic principles of trust and safety and yet the process can achieve incredible results in a person’s mental health. Despite this seeming paradox, I have been honoured to help many people over the years become comfortable and confident in terms of appropriately sharing their personal experiences and finding viable solutions to the things that have caused them to become temporarily stuck. I personally find this a very enriching experience.

I think it’s very important for people who are coming for therapy for the first time to know that they are in charge of their own therapy. This means that the client decides what issues they wish to focus on, what information is to be shared. A client should also feel free to decide on the pace of therapy and should always feel comfortable letting their therapist know when they are experiencing any kind of difficulty with the process. Ideally, good therapy involves a meaningful collaboration between therapist and client but sometimes a good fit is not achieved. In this case, I would strongly encourage a client to seek a better fit via obtaining a different therapist.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have served people for over 30 years in my capacity as a therapist.

Talking to others (and, for that matter, ourselves) is the equivalent of running data interpretation software on some collected data. Data points (or distinct personal experiences) aren’t particularly useful until we figure out what they mean or what they are trying to indicate. In similar fashion, our “computer” (brain) needs to run “software” (created via our beliefs and “life-lessons”) to analyze our experiences with a view toward making pertinent decisions around what we are to do next. When we seek help from someone in a discursive manner, the experience is akin to upgrading our software so that the quality of our decisions might improve over time.

I would have to say that serving the mental health needs of fellow soldiers in combat, people who I found were very emotionally needy given our situations, provided some incredible life lessons for me. It was during this time that I learned what a deep honour it is to share pain, joy, and sorrow with a fellow human being.