Our former relationships serve as a prototype for our current personal and professional connections. We enter into every new relationship with those expectations and that shapes how others behave with us. Our consultations will give you a better insight of these patterns, expectations, and how they affect your current relationships.

What to expect?

Our joint work is a process in which we usually meet once a week. The first 1-4 occasions consists a psychological assessment and we also determine what could be the purpose of our therapy in English, how long would it take, how often could we meet and what methods we would work with. In some cases, we decide in advance how many times (e.g., 4, 10, 20) do we meet. Depending on the nature of the problem, it might not be possible to provide such a number, so we will review the results of our meetings at regular intervals.
A session lasts 50 minutes including arrival and departure. If you need to cancel one of our meetings, you should do it as soon as possible, preferably 72 hours in advance, because otherwise the usual fee will be charged. If this latter happens more than once, it hinders our common counseling work, so we will review continuation.

Our joint work is not about giving advice. Problems you face aren’t likely to be solved with simple advice – if they were, they could have been solved by suggestions from friends and acquaintances. However, they can be solved by understanding your emotions and recognizing your motives, with the help of which you can make better decisions for yourself. Neither the psychologist nor anyone else knows better than you.

Method

I work with a form of therapy called Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), which I have found to be remarkably effective in treating a wide range of psychological problems, including depression, anxiety, physical symptoms, relationship problems, self-esteem issues and self-harming behaviours.

ISTDP is a fast-track model among dynamic psychotherapies for alleviating symptoms of emotional distress and promoting mental health quickly and cost-effectively. This psychotherapy method can be a highly effective, deeply transformative and emotionally powerful form of therapy.

Potential difficulties

You start the sessions and talk about anything that concerns you. Clients are often afraid of having nothing to say and may even rehearse what to say at the next psychological consultation. However, you will soon realize that it is not difficult to talk about what is within yourself. The psychologist helps you to focus on the important things and discover your thoughts, emotions, bodily feelings, relationship patterns, moods that affect your everyday life.

During our meetings, strong positive or negative feelings may appear inside you towards me. This is perfectly fine and it is one of the most important parts of our work, as they run in parallel with your usual ways of connecting. You may also want to cancel our next meeting. However, when difficult feelings appear (such as anger, anxiety or shame), it is very important to meet and talk about those feelings. This is what will be really useful for you!

We will also talk about the process of ending our meetings and optimally, you will be able to turn the emotions that come with closing to your own advantage.

Confidentiality

Information shared by you during the Budapest psychology consultations will be treated with strict confidentiality, in accordance with the Code of Professional Ethics for Psychologists and the guidelines of the GDPR. This applies to written notes during consultations, video recordings of sessions, photographs of drawings, or any other works. Exceptions to the secrecy are:

• conditions of self-harm, public danger, endangerment of minors, substance use and pregnancy in people under 18 years of age,
• I might review of session video recordings with my supervisor to improve the quality of your treatment.

The obligation of confidentiality continues even after the relationship with you has been terminated.

Video recording

I record my sessions so that I can review what happens later and be aware of where I can do better. Occasionally, I take the case to supervision, where I can get a virtual second medical opinion: together we look at where we could make progress in treatment and what is preventing it. I think of it as a kind of routine audit. If someone goes too long without such an audit, it can lead to problems. Getting expert feedback helps me to help you better.

You can also view the recordings if you wish. Many patients have reported that watching video of sessions has been helpful to them making them more aware of their own behavior and feelings. Patients who watch the video generally only watch a small number of sessions, but some watch almost every session. Some report that it is like having another session of therapy.

All video recordings are stored in a secure location and permanently destroyed immediately if you ask to do so or at the end of this year.

Competence and boundaries

During psychological counseling the focus of is on your everyday problems – I don’t treat mental disorders (psychopathology). Psychological counseling is a psychological intervention that works with a counseling focus, based on a situational diagnosis and aims to solve your current life situation, improve self-confidence and coping.
In case of a problem that exceeds my competence, I will refer you to an appropriate specialist (like a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist, in the case of a pathology).