Ms. Nan Jacobson Wise, PhD, MSW

The use of therapy is extremely common, with millions of people going through therapy each year in the United States alone. It can be useful for patients who want to learn coping skills when they are facing difficult issues or need to heal from past trauma. Therapy can also be a support tool when patients are facing stressful periods in their life. Essentially, therapy is helpful any time life events require more mental or emotional resources than a patient currently has. Change is a major theme of therapy, offering a supportive environment for patients to make changes to their life or themselves so that past problems stop recurring in the future.

There are several different types of psychotherapy, with the most common being cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. This type of therapy focuses on the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, is a form of CBT that encourages acceptance and validation as well as change. Interpersonal therapy focuses on relationships and communication as a pathway to feeling better. Psychoanalysis, an older form of therapy invented by Sigmund Freud, teaches that all problems stem from the unconscious.

Although many people see therapists by themselves, not all psychotherapy is one-on-one. For example, in family therapy, the therapist treats a family as a unit. Patients can also participate in group therapy, where they meet as a group to work on issues.

Psychotherapy is a safe, powerful healing tool that can help patients lead happier and healthier lives. However, therapy is a joint effort between the patient and the therapist. Both need to work together in order for therapy to be effective.

During sex therapy, individuals or couples will talk about their sexual issue and their background. It is common to be given exercises to work on outside of therapy to improve communication, intimacy, or physical response. Sometimes these exercises bring up strong emotions, and then those emotions can be discussed during therapy. The goals of sex therapy are usually to obtain reliable information about sex, to improve verbal and physical communication between a couple, and to improve sexual performance.

Because of the nature of sex therapy and how vulnerable it makes most patients feel to discuss their sex life, it is extremely important to choose a sex therapist wisely. Referrals can usually be obtained via physicians or clergy, but it is also important to seek a credentialed therapist. The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) offers certification to sex therapists, which ensures proper training and education, as well as a strict code of ethics.