Welcome to True Path Psychotherapy! It has been said that one of the most courageous things a human being can do is to enter therapy. The inner world of thoughts, feelings, and body sensations can often feel overwhelming. You are not alone! Whether you are struggling with anxiety, depression, current or post-traumatic experiences, relationship problems, grief and loss, or any other human experience for which you need support, healing, and encouragement, you have come to the right place.
The True Path Mission is to provide an emotionally safe, non-judgmental and spacious place to receive professional psychotherapy as you navigate your own unique life journey.
My therapeutic style is warm, supportive, solution-focused, and based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, which teaches us to notice and question our negative thoughts and perceptions of self and other in order to come to a more balanced view. Research has shown that trauma lives in the body, not just the mind, and that sometimes talk therapy alone is not enough to resolve our deepest emotional wounds. Thus, I incorporate “body-focused” therapies, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and the Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM), having been trained in both modalities. Also included in my therapeutic approach is psycho-education, or a teaching element, to provide you with new knowledge and to support skill building. I grew up in a house filled with books; my father was a school teacher and both he and my mother revered learning. So, naturally, being in a state of continuous learning is something that i value greatly and trust will benefit your therapeutic process, too. As I continue to learn, I will gladly share my discoveries when pertinent to your own journey in psychotherapy.
The True Path Psychotherapy approach is grounded in eleven (11) core beliefs:
- We come into the world with a brain that is hard-wired to adapt. Effective therapy seeks to enhance and strengthen the adaptive information processing mechanism and adaptive memory networks that already exist within your brain and body to help calm your nervous system. These adaptive mechanisms support our work in therapy to honor, reprocess, and integrate your traumatic memories into both hemispheres of the brain, so that you can live more fully in the present.
- All feelings, negative thoughts, emotions, and body sensations are valuable and serve as our constant teachers. Learning to allow the flow of our inner experience to rise and ebb without resistance brings peace within and a new resiliency of mind and spirit.
- When we get good at slowing down, noticing and questioning our thoughts and assumptions, incredible changes can begin to happen.
- Focusing on our existing personal strengths and seeking to build upon them is the most effective way to move forward in our lives. Past regrets, disappointments, and traumas are to be honored and learned from, but we need not live there.
- Good therapy does not need to take years. When we develop a treatment plan together, based on a comprehensive assessment, your insights and needs, and along with my clinical input, significant progress can be made in weeks or months.
- There is no such thing as failure or “getting it wrong” – only new discoveries about what works and what feels good to you, moment by moment. Each one of us has the capacity to grow and change. And, you do not have to do it alone!
- The skills you will learn in therapy with me can serve you for the rest of your life. You will become your own therapist and even share your experiences with others to encourage and support those who are still suffering.
- Therapy alone is never enough. We must give attention to our nutrition, exercise, work life, need for creative expression, sexuality, and play, Spiritual practices, such as a faith tradition, yoga, meditation, and other spiritual tools, are also extremely helpful in reconnecting you with your truest self – which is always unfolding!
- Enjoying the process of discovering what you truly desire and exploring ways to manifest those desires in your life is the key to happiness. Desires are always arising. They are a natural part of life – the soul’s way of reaching for more – more joy, more contribution, more peace, more creative expression, more love, more vitality – more of who you are.
- The primary cause of emotional suffering is the separation between mind, body, and spirit. Our thought patterns and the feelings and body sensations that accompany them are the brilliant guides along the path that let us know when we are headed in the best direction for our lives.
- Mindful breathing is the portal to insight, inner balance, and infinite creativity.
But even with all of the insight and knowledge in the world, ultimately, it is relationship that heals – relationship first and foremost with ourself and then others. It is deep listening that heals. It is kindness, patience, giving up the need to be right, being curious, being gentle with ourself, seeking to love and understand ourself and others, staying open to receiving love, that heals.
I invite you to experience the therapeutic space with me and see what is possible. With new knowledge, insight, and skills – with a new way of simply being – our unnecessary suffering begins to melt away.
“It’s never too late to be who you were meant to be.” – George Eliot
Warm regards,
Laura D. Cutler, LMFT
California Lic. #: MFC 39659
