Jared Scherz - How to Succeed in Therapy: Navigating the Pitfalls on the Path to Wellness

How to Succeed in Therapy

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Scherz, Jared.

How to succeed in therapy : Navigating the pitfalls on the path to wellness / by Jared Scherz.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-4134-3 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4422-4135-0 (electronic)

1. Psychotherapy. 2. Psychotherapist and patient--Miscellana. I. Title.

RC475.S34 2015

616.89'14--dc23

2014030456

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For all those people who either cant afford therapy, cant find a practitioner in your area who you are confident working with, or arent ready to commit to the process, I am in the middle of developing a library of life lessons through a range of media such as video to help with your personal growth journey. You can find this emerging project at either www.itc-home.com or the ultimate home at www.txhelper.com.

For any clinician, coach, counselor, psychologist, motivational speaker, consultant, educator, physician, or personal growth advocate, I have created software that will help you bring your valuable lessons to people across the world. Through PsychPro software (www.psychpro.com), you can create your own self-help multimedia library for your own clients as well as those beyond your physical reach.

For educators who want coaching or personal/professional growth work, please visit TeacherCoach (www.teachercoach.com), where the specific needs of educators are being addressed to improve the lives of this most important profession.

Dr. Scherz is the author of other books, mainly related to schools and violence prevention. A list of these works includes:

Harnessing the Power of Resistance: A Guide for Educators

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781930556768/

The Truth about School Violence

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781578864560

Catastrophic School Violence: A New Approach to Prevention

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781610489850

Workbook for Preventing Catastrophic School Violence

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475812428

It Cant Happen Here: One School Learns from Tragedy

https://www.wavecloud.com/book/it-can-t-happen-here/978-1-62217-158-3/12732476

Jared Scherz, PhD, has been working as a psychotherapist for over twenty years with individuals of all ages, issues, ethnicities, genders, and cultures, and focuses on both couples and group therapy. While trained in a variety of approaches, Scherz eventually found his home in gestalt therapy, where the client and therapist partner as a team to explore, understand, and experiment with the clients unfolding experience.

Scherz is the author of five published books in the field of education: Harnessing the Power of Resistance, The Truth about School Violence, Catastrophic School Violence, Workbook for Preventing Catastrophic School Violence, and It Cant Happen Here. He has an unpublished manuscript on couples therapy and has begun two new ventures including a social media networking site called ufeud (www.ufeud.com), where people are helped to navigate differences more productively.

In 2001, Scherz created the first wholeness center in New Jersey, called Integrated Therapy Center (ITC). The vision for ITC is to provide individuals with a wide range of holistic services such as yoga, nutrition, massage, psychoeducation, and physical conditioning to help in transforming the body, mind, and spirit. The center has a dual purpose of providing parallel types of services to small and large systems. The center is located in south central New Jersey.

He believes the focus of therapy is to empower the client or system toward recognition or awareness of both barriers toward improved health and inherent strengths within/between. He believes that goodness is inherent in every person, yet they hold themselves back in some shape or form or are held back by forces outside their control. He helps clients appreciate that change is paradoxical, in that a greater understanding of what keeps a person feeling stuck is needed before growth can occur. The broad goals of therapy are to help clients appreciate who they are, limitations and all, while recognizing and striving toward their full potential. This may mean finding closure with unfinished business from the past or learning how our experiences shape our present. Each person and/or system becomes more whole or integrated in order to function optimally.

He is also the creator of PsychPro (www.psychpro.com), a learning management software where helping professionals use a multimedia platform to enhance their practice. His next project, currently under way, is TxHelper (www.txhelper.com), where providers of health care are brought together with those seeking help in an online library of video courses to improve our health.

Scherz is also the founder of TeacherCoach (www.teachercoach.com), a site dedicated to improving the lives of educators. This project consists of bringing educators together to help build support and success around both personal growth and professional development goals.

Scherz is married to Donna Scherz, also a clinical psychologist. Together they live in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, with their three children, Cassidy (ten), Sera (nine), and Emma (seven), as well as their cat, Scarlett. At home Scherz is best known as Daddy, the gardener and chef, dedicated to raising a healthy and happy family.

This book is intended for people who are considering initiating self-discovery or personal growth work or have made the decision to start therapy, need guidance in what to expect/how to prepare, or are questioning whether their therapy is working optimally for them or if other approaches to wellness will suit them. Of the millions of people who seek therapy and other health-care services every day, only a fraction comprehend the full potential of therapy, which for the purpose of this book means personal growth work.

If you are onsidering therapy for the first time, or trying to improve upon a prior experience, you are not alone by far. More resources are available to people now than there were ten years ago, but there are few comprehensive guides, such as this one, that can help take you through the process from start to finish.

For those of you who have tried therapy and didnt feel successful, this book may help you understand what went wrong or what may need to be different this next time around. Maybe it was timing. The right therapy at the wrong time may still turn out poorly. Many people seek therapy in times of crisis but arent yet ready to do the more involved work necessary to get to a higher level of health; instead, they aim to get through the initial crisis or to feel better quickly.