This is one of those statements that I have heard a lot over the years.
I often think that therapy is a little like this and that my job is to help you take a look at the forest from above, or to find your path through them.
For me it means that you sometimes you can get lost looking at all the individual trees that seem to go on forever around you. By focusing on each of these you are not appreciating all that this forest has, or alternatively that you can’t find a path through all the trees.
Therapy for me can feel like this. There are trees everywhere and it can maybe feel suffocating or that you are trapped without a way out. I feel that my role as your therapist is to help you look down at the forest and see the trees for what they are. There might be a lot of them, but there is always a way out of them. There is always a way to appreciate the beauty and individuality of each and every tree, regardless of what it looks like. To understand that without those individual trees, there would be no forest at all.
We as people are complex. One single trait or life experience doesn’t define our entire being. Neither does one type of tree define the whole forest.
So come and take a walk with me…