The Process of Psychotherapy
The process of psychotherapy is a deeply personal, introspective undertaking. While specific goals will emerge relevant to your most persistent and pervasive problems, wellness of the soul remains the underlying and universal aim. As your psychotherapist, I am an ally on your path of healing. Together we create a purposeful, intentional, and reverent space wherein we invite your psyche’s innate wisdom and engender a place for therapeutic repair. Therapy is meant to be an emotionally safe harbor where you can press up against your edges, your incongruence, and your discomfort. We will recognize the wounds, trauma, and injustices that may have befallen you and begin the process of remedy, integration, and reconciliation.
Healing begins with a felt-sense of attunement and an authentic experience of being witnessed, seen, and heard. Together we will cultivate your inner direction, intrinsic wisdom, and equilibrium. Your honed insight coupled with my empathic attention, and eventual interpretation and analysis, are all harnessed as agents of change. As your therapist, I will facilitate this journey but the depths reached will be your own.
Excavate, Elucidate, Ameliorate
I view therapy as a three-part cycle of excavation, elucidation, and amelioration; in essence: uncover it, understand it, heal it. The excavation phase requires us to dig deep, to peer beyond the surface and inquire into the caves and crevices of your history, exploring family of origin, intergenerational lore, and epigenetic imprints; as well as examining your personal experience of friendships, work relationships, romantic relationships, and as relevant, marriage and parenting. Here we lift the curtain behind your current conflict searching for historical patterns of anxiety, turmoil, neglect, abuse, and trauma, unearthing the root causes and ingrained systems manifested in your current distress. With compassion and awareness, we identify the necessary and relevant elements that beg our attention.
The elucidation aspect of therapy refers to the process of illumination, revelation, and meaning-making. This is the process of distilling and understanding, inviting clarity, and developing a roadmap of your mind and ways of being in the world. Together we seek to recognize patterns and understand the interrelatedness of your thoughts, actions, behaviors, and interactions. Herein we find the opportunity for interpretation and analysis.
The amelioration stage of this three-part process indicates the initiation of healing. The therapeutic relationship itself is utilized to implement interventions for trauma integration where psychological wounds are tended to with therapeutic salve for the soul. Therapy can host an opportunity to replace maladaptive coping mechanisms with healthy functioning, create new responses, develop new habits, and neurologically rewire your brain to think, respond, and choose differently. The therapeutic alliance can facilitate neurobiological, emotional, and psychological healing. The cycle of excavation, elucidation, and amelioration repeats throughout the therapeutic process.
Jessica Hicks, M.A., M.A., L.M.F.T.
Jessica is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California, a Program Director at Psychological Care & Healing (PCH) Treatment Center in Los Angeles, and a consultant for Hollywood Health & Society. Jessica holds two 4.0 Master’s Degrees in Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute: Depth Psychology with a Somatic Studies Specialization; and Counseling Psychology with a Marriage & Family Therapy emphasis; and a Bachelor’s Degree in Professional Music from Berklee College of Music. Jessica completed Part I in EMDR Therapy Training through EMDRIA approved Institute for Creative Mindfulness; Module I in Addiction Therapy through the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals; and Module I in Energy Medicine through the Four Winds Society. Her article, "The Intersection of Unconscious Trauma Responses and Sexual Praxes" is published in the July/August, 2019, edition of CAMFT's The Therapist Magazine. Jessica worked as a therapist for two years at the residential addiction treatment center, Beit T’ Shuvah, and for over two years as the Senior Producer at KidsInTheHouse.com interviewing renown psychologists, psychiatrists, and experts in the field of mental health. Jessica has led community music therapy workshops for Pitzer College and Loyola Marymount University Extension. She was a celebrity parenting coach and columnist for Mothering.com for two years and has been published in the HuffingtonPost.com. Jessica specializes in treating highly gifted and highly sensitive people, as well as relationship issues, family systems, anxiety, depression, individuation, compulsion, trauma, and dream work. Her motto for the process of psychotherapy is Excavate, Elucidate, Ameliorate: uncover it, understand it, heal it.
