Individual Therapy in Cambridge, MA
As we move from childhood to adulthood, we form a sense of self
We learn our way around our bodies, emotions, and thoughts, how to act, and how to relate to others. We learn a way of being.
Over time, we identify with this way of being. It persists because it serves us well. It contributes to our success, and provides us with comfort and safety.
But the way of being we learn can outlive its usefulness. We can find ourselves feeling as if there is no choice but to continue thinking, feeling, and acting in the ways we always have.
It can begin to feel as though there is no hope for life to be otherwise.
Therapy is time set apart from the current rhythms and patterns of your life
When I sit with someone for the first time, my intention is to meet their experience with a kind, curious, nonjudgmental attention. The direction that this leads varies from client to client and session to session, but there are common themes:
Differentiating between felt emotional experience, a process we do not have control over, and the way we respond to emotional experience, which we can learn to do more skillfully. This allows for clear decisions about what aspects of suffering one works to accept and what aspects of suffering one works to change.
Attending to relational dynamics: relationship with one’s self, relationships with others, and the therapeutic relationship.
Noticing avoidance: learning to notice the emotions and thoughts one avoids and cultivating the courage to face them can be an important means of learning and growth.
Practicing extending acceptance and compassion to one’s self and others.
Learning to recognize the ways that past experience shapes present, which can be useful in interpreting the meaning of emotions and finding the most effective response.
This process can contribute to a deeper understanding of one’s self, strengthened connections to others, greater clarity in decision making, and an improved sense of well being.
Below are a few common experiences that lead my clients to seek therapy:
Anxiety & Stress
Anxiety can present in different ways: spiraling thoughts, difficulty focusing, tightness in the chest, feeling sped up, uneasy, irritable. It is natural to want to avoid these experiences, to try to make them stop or distract from them. This impulse is human, but can lead to anxiety persisting and intensifying. I work with my clients to move towards their anxiety, to approach it with curiosity rather than judgment or fear. The process mirrors the way one might approach a friend who is feeling anxious: asking in order to learn more, setting out to explore the most effective means of relating and attending to their experience.
Depression
When I sit with a client experiencing depression, I am curious to learn about their internal world, the way they relate to themselves. There may be deep sadness, or despair, or numbness. There may be a harsh critical voice. The painful nature of these experiences is often compounded by isolation. I work to offer a kind, curious, compassionate presence alongside the client, so we can begin to cultivate their ability to receive attention and care around these aspects of their experience. Over time, this becomes an opportunity for them to learn to more effectively offer this kind of attention and care to themselves, as well as to seek it out in relationship with others.
Grief & Loss
The experience of grief is variable, from person to person, week to week, moment to moment. Grief is present in my work with clients in different ways. At times, clients seek therapy in the aftermath of a significant loss. Loss can happen in the midst of a course of therapy. Clients share their experience of anticipatory grief. There is grief and loss that is inherent to being a human being moving through time.
I understand grief as an inescapable part of our humanity, which calls for attention and care. I work with clients to learn more about how they relate to their grief, and to find the places where the quality of this relationship could change for the better. This process does not cure or banish grief, but it can lead to integration, and to the felt sense that there is room for more experience of life alongside grief.
Life Transitions & Change
In The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli draws the distinction between events and things. He uses a kiss as an example of an event, a set of conditions met for a limited period of time. He uses a stone as an example of a thing, which we think of as a stable object persisting through time. Rovelli argues that the only difference is timescale, that the stone too is a process unfolding, a set of conditions met for a limited period of time. In this framing, everything is a process.
It is easy to mistake our lives, bodies, relationships, life circumstances, for things, rather than processes unfolding. We can find ourselves resisting change, trying to cling to something that is ending or has already ended, trying to go back in time to recapture something lost, withdrawing from our experience in an attempt to avoid change.
I work with my clients to observe the change happening in their lives and learn how they relate to this experience. We look for the opportunities to attend to the full spectrum of this experience: to care more effectively for the loss and grief inherent to change, and to open up to the possibility that exists alongside.
To learn more, read through the FAQ on logistics and other information about my practice, send me an email at therapy@natetorrence.com, give me a call at (774) 563-3466, or read more about my background and approach to therapy, my work with couples, or the integration of principles of mindfulness in my work.
Get in touch
[Individual psychotherapy for adults with Nate Torrence, LMHC, at Otherwise Psychotherapy, LLC in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sessions are 55 minutes, offered in person at the Central Square office (678 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139) or via secure telehealth throughout Massachusetts. Nate works from a humanistic, existential, and mindfulness-based orientation, including Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). Clients often come to this work around anxiety, depression, relationship patterns, life transitions, grief, self-esteem, stress, and questions of meaning or direction. The therapeutic approach emphasizes emotional awareness, self-compassion, and the examination of long-standing patterns that may no longer serve. Free 15-minute phone consultation. In-network with BCBS, Harvard Pilgrim, and Tufts.]