Millville resident Joyce Wickham knew it wouldn’t be easy to restart her psychotherapy practice in a new state, but she’s not sweating it.
“It’s always a really slow process, but I’m happy, just kind of plugging along,” she pointed out.
Not a bad place to be. And definitely reflective of Wickham’s down-to-earth attitude about her profession.
For instance, working with a therapist is standard procedure for therapists-in-training, Wickham noted, saying you have to resolve your own issues before you can help other people with theirs. “There are no rules that say you have to do that, but a lot of us feel it’s a good idea to do that work,” she said.
And she said she’d found the experience beneficial.
Surprising, perhaps, coming from a therapist, Wickham suggested therapy isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, something as simple as a hike in the countryside can turn a bad day around, she pointed out.
Or, for instance, while many people struggle with issues related either directly or indirectly to grief, Wickham said some do just as well using non-professional support networks.
“For a lot of normal human processes, like grief, we reach out to others, we get help wherever we can,” she said. “Therapy’s not for everybody.”
But when people get stuck, when they isolate themselves or when they’ve spent a long time working through something and feel like they aren’t making headway, Wickham said therapy can help.
Most clients walk through her door following some major crisis, she said — loss of a job, break-up of a marriage. “Once they take care of the problem, they stay on to take care of themselves,” she said.
Wickham received her initial psychiatric training in the 1960s, but didn’t go straight into the field. She stayed home to raise her children, eventually stepping into agency work — first as program director for a child-abuse protection agency, then at a county-run substance-abuse program.
“But I found what I really liked was working with individuals, or couples or small groups,” she said. “So, I went back for my graduate degree.”
She studied with a Jungian analyst for three years, and said she found a lot of value in those classical perspectives. “(Carl Jung) talked about the process of ‘individuation’ — the move toward psychological wholeness,” Wickham explained. “It’s not something that’s definitely accomplished. It’s a process.”
Some consider individuation synonymous with self-realization — either way, Wickham simplified the concept.
“It’s learning to pay attention to ourselves, to listen to ourselves,” she said. “Looking at the things that attract us, the things that repel us.”
She said Jungian analysis is especially useful in Sussex County, where there’s an aging demographic, because Jung had focused special attention on the transition into middle-age.
“As he got on in years, he started talking about two points in life,” Wickham explained. “At the first point, people are running around, establishing careers and families. And they’re extremely busy.
“But at the second point, they’re now established,” she continued. “They’re looking around, saying, ‘OK, now what? What’s next?’ Jung loved to work with people in the second half of their lives — as people had more time to explore their lives.”
As useful as Jungian analysis might be in some cases, Wickham said she doesn’t think it would be prudent for any therapist to confine themself to any one particular method.
“Use whatever works,” she stated.
Wickham noted cognitive-behavioral therapy as another favorite — “looking at the whole person, what’s caused the problem and what they can do about it,” she explained.
She used a phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous, “stinking thinking,” as an example of thought/behavior that becomes a problem for many people — not only alcoholics. “Hanging around with the same people, doing the same cognitive things,” Wickham noted — and typically, ending up back in the same bad mood or situation.
Or, for people who feel stuck in fast gear, and maybe feel like they don’t have time to give anything serious focus, she said the practice of “mindfulness” had been of great help to her, personally.
“Meditation for stressfulness can help us to stay in the day, and not let our normal, human, negative thoughts snowball to such a degree that they keep us from exploring the parts of life we’d like to explore,” she said. “Really, meditation is cognitive therapy.”
The goal is to find the techniques that best help clients understand their own thought processes, Wickham noted.
For anyone feeling like they’re overdue for some progress, her practical brand of therapy might be just the thing. For more information, call (302) 541-4887.