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So much of Western health—including mental health—is focused on what is wrong with us and what drug can be prescribed as a quick fix.
But what if we’re looking at everything the wrong way?
What if we shifted the focus on the positive instead? Would that open up a whole new world to us?
These are the kind of questions that led psychologist Martin Seligman, Ph.D. to create Positive Psychology.
It was a direct response to western medicine’s focus on maladaptive behavior, and negative thinking when it came to mental illness.
In more specific words, he defined it as the “scientific study of optimal human functioning [that] aims to discover and promote the factors that allow individuals and communities to thrive.”
Reframing our difficulties as adaptive strivings rather than illness, Positive Psychology helps us see ourselves through the lens of our strengths rather than our weaknesses.
This doesn’t mean denying our pain or ignoring our problems.
It simply means that just because we’re struggling it doesn’t mean we’re broken.
It just means we’re human.
Emphasizing happiness, well-being, and positivity, we focus on how to optimize our lives and build upon our strengths.
The ultimate goal with Positive Psychology is living a life that allows you to experience happiness, fulfillment, and meaning.
In its inception, psychology used to center on a couple different components, like improving normal lives, curing mental illnesses, and identifying and nurturing peoples’ talents.
However, after World War II, the field shifted to only curing mental illnesses, which meant focusing almost exclusively on what wasn’t going right.
After the war, many people came back with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and so resources were put towards curing and treating mental illnesses.
That’s when psychology adopted the “disease model” rather than a wellness and optimization model.
While this led to some positive discoveries, such as finding treatments for once-incurable illnesses like depression and panic attacks, the tendency to view ourselves through the lens of our brokenness has become endemic in our culture in ways that are hurting us rather than helping us grow and thrive.
We’re so confident in our extraordinary therapists that we guarantee you’ll love your match – or your money back.
At My LA Therapy, our highly-vetted Anxiety experts are selected not only for their clinical acumen but for who they are.
Positive Psychology uses specific techniques to foster positive attitudes toward a person’s subjective experiences, embrace individual traits, and encourage acceptance of past experiences through gaining understanding of their meaning.
This mode of therapy involves collaboration with your therapist to generate excitement and hope about your future experiences while sustaining focus in the present moment to increase well-being and contentment.
One method that supports creating an optimal life includes tuning into your gratitude by keeping a journal or having a gratitude visit with your loved ones.
Gratitude visits involve communicating to important people in your life how greatly they impact you, as well as designing your day with intention and practicing acts of kindness.
Journaling is another method used in Positive Psychology practice.
After your therapy sessions, you will begin to develop meaning in your life through writing and processing your life story, with our support.
You will discover your strengths in overcoming challenges, begin to understand ways in which you have grown, and create a vision for your future self, a “North Star” for who you want to be, so to speak.
There are three levels that were used to determine how to use positive psychology. These include the following:
There are many, many benefits to using Positive Psychology, mostly because it
emphasizes and teaches you how to shift your entire perspective into a positive one.
Based on numerous studies, some of the benefits include:
Some benefits that positive psychology can have on your workplace include:
Therapy can successfully improve your life by helping you minimize anxiety, identifying and changing underlying thought and behavioral patterns that contribute to your struggles, and providing you with strategies to decrease discomfort while restoring an overall sense of peace.
Our evidence-based, scientifically proven interventions are demonstrated by research to be effective in living a more positive life.
Learn more about our empirically based therapy modalities by visiting our Methods page.
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I am blown away! I don’t write testimonials, unless I have been extremely moved by something. I was blessed to work with Brooke on a single session, and before this I was in therapy on and off with multiple therapists for the last 20 years of my life. Brooke was able to do more in one session than many years of work with my previous therapist. She has the true gift of great insight and compassion while also getting straight to the heart of your blind spots and unconscious issues in a way that has truly changed my life.
Skyler J.
There are people who are good at their work there are people like Brooke: who are born to do it. I cannot recommend Brooke more highly. I can only imagine where I would be today if I had started working with her years ago. From the beginning of our session, she knew exactly what tools and questions that would work for my particular psychology and my personal experience. No other therapist has been able to do that or anything close.
What I also really appreciate from our session is Brooke's ability to go directly to the source of the issue while also keeping a very gentle and kind energy with me. I felt very seen, understood, and supported. Everything and more that I could have ever asked for from a therapist. I have a severe trauma history and complex issues she was able to immediately identify and help. If she could help me, I know she can help you too.
Taylor E.
You did more in 45 minutes than my last therapist did in a year.
Jamie
With your help, I've finally started to understand that while my vivid imagination often wants to create terrifying monsters under the bed, in a lot of cases those monsters are nothing more than a heap of decidedly less-terrifying laundry I've avoided for too long that just needs to be aired out and put away. Which is definitely a lot easier than monster slaying. Thank you for shedding light in the dark places I was too afraid to face alone.
Morgan B.
I am extremely fortunate to work with Sydney, who is helping me create real internal change. The talent to listen well is Hall of Fame stuff, and she has that. She then follows with questions, strategies that are organic to the moment. I have come to believe that deep, radical, if occasionally deeply painful change ... and, then, healing can happen. I'm just at the lip of that last part - but would not have gotten there, AT ALL, without Sydney
Ric K.
The best therapist ever! Life-changing 🙂
Catherine H.
Right now, the work is changing my life, sometimes in inches, sometimes in miles.
Ric K.
