Individual Psychotherapy

Personalized, One-on-One Sessions

Individual psychotherapy does not employ cookie-cutter understanding or fixed theoretical methodologies. Each person’s distinctive experience in the world and what that experience says determine how they should be understood. As an experienced provider of individual psychotherapy in Torrance, CA, Mike King believes that genuinely effective psychotherapists “hold their theories very lightly,” as they focus on the uniqueness of each individual and what their lives hold for them.

Each time Mike begins working with someone new, he reminds himself that they bring a uniquely personal set of experiences into the room. Individuals may use similar words to describe their experiences or depict seemingly comparable feelings and even histories, but that does not mean they should be perceived in similar ways. For Mike, the importance of doing everything he can to fully understand the people he works with and their unique experience cannot be overstated.

Just as important is recognizing that the therapeutic relationship established from the first moment of contact is the bedrock for everything that follows.

Mike’s approach to psychotherapy often relies on exploring the evolving aspects of the relationship, how it feels, what is “good or bad” and why, what needs to be changed, and how all of this may or may not mirror other relationships. This approach offers two essential things: Firstly, many people feel heard, accepted, and understood in ways they never have before. Secondly, examining the experience of our relationship begins to foster sensibilities and a depth of consciousness that illuminates long-standing emotional patterns. All of this has one purpose: to create an environment where people can safely and consciously explore those feelings and behaviors that brought them into his office. He believes that this way of working generates physical, emotional, or cognitive change that will bring them peace and healing.

Individual Psychotherapy

Each time I work with a new client, I’m reminded that they bring uniquely personal experiences into the room, and those experiences are specific to their ways of understanding the world and how they have experienced their lives. We may use similar words to describe our circumstances and feelings, but that does not mean we should be understood in similar ways. Just as DNA is unique to each individual, so are the subtle ways we experience and understand the world around us. In this sense, as in many others, there is no such thing as normal.

Indeed, effective psychotherapy does not employ cookie-cutter understandings or fixed theoretical methodologies. I believe wise practitioners “hold their theories lightly” as they focus on the uniqueness of the individual and how their life has been shaped by circumstances and experience.

As I work to understand someone’s experience, I often focus on how that experience affects our relationship: how it feels for us to work together, what is “good or bad” about the experience, and why it feels the way it does. The answer to these questions frequently illuminates lifelong relational patterns that have gone unnoticed or misunderstood. I have found that this approach often helps people understand their relationships in deeper ways, revealing why they have consistently responded to their environment and others in the ways they have.

All of this has one purpose: to create a setting in which individuals can safely and more consciously explore those experiences, feelings, and behaviors that brought them into my office. Combined with other individually specific approaches, this way of working contributes to emotional, cognitive, and somatic change and promotes healing.

Be yourself; everyone else is taken.

Oscar Wilde