Dr. Michael Jones Psychologist

07/23/2018

Depression is treatable. Now is the time. Call for a free 20-minute consultation.

It’s hard enough to take care of our own mental health, so what happens when our partner is depressed?

07/12/2018

I'm excited to be listing my practice with TherapyRoute.com. I believe you will find information there that can help you change your life.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. - C.G Jung

Choose your life.Choose you.
http://TherapyRoute.com

06/27/2018

The PDM is a more human way of understanding people's psychological problems.

04/12/2018

Seashells and tree stumps:

This is the shell of a nautilus. Think of it as kind of a squid with a shell. As the nautilus grows it seals off the current chamber and begins the formation of a new chamber, one that fits with its' new growing self. Now I'm a psychologist, so you can probably see where this is going. In fact, it's a nautilus shell I purchased in a souvenier shop because I love this idea so much - it feels so personal and important to me. When it comes to metaphors, though, I could have just as easily posted a picture of a tree stump with all of its' growth rings. That could have be an illustration that who we are right now contains everything that came before. I think both are true, don't you? Like the tree, who you are at this very moment includes all of your history, the good and bad, successes and failures, encouragement and criticism, joy and sorrow. Who you are right this moment is also the starting point of everything to come. Sometimes though, we need to find a way, like the nautilus, to close off the past and move forward with a new sense of purpose. We need to grow in a way that is no longer anchored by the past, the sorrow of the past, the mistakes of the past, the limitations of our past. Therapy is a great way to explore these issues. Within the safe therapy room you're free to give a voice to your need to grow. If this is where you're finding yourself right now, perhaps it is time to contact someone who can help. I can help.

03/31/2018

"True Self" and the "False Self":

Last April I ran into this guy in Central Park, NYC who offered "Bad Portraits" for 5 bucks. Clever. He worked furiously, his cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth; his head tilted sideways to avoid smoke in his eyes. On a small lap table, he drew head-to-toe portraits of myself and two friends which looked almost exactly like none of us. We received these awful renderings with glee and were happy to cough up our fivers for the pleasure. The whole experience added to the overall fun of that warm Spring day.

Back home, looking at my bad portrait, I was reminded of an idea in psychoanalytic therapy about "True Self" vs "False Self". The notion is that early on in our lives the people around us, parents, family, friends fail to respond to something we do or say, or some aspect of our personality, our self; they fail to respond to us with love and approval. Or, they may respond in a very negative way that clearly communicates that that aspect of ourselves is not acceptable. When a comparable situation happens again, we do something different. Instead we offer up something we hope will be more acceptable. If it is accepted, then that becomes our ready response. Over and over we hide some aspect of our true self, fearing rejection, and substitute a more reliably acceptable response or presentation. This happens completely out of our awareness. All we know for sure is we want to be accepted, to be loved, and it hurts to be rejected. The process takes its toll, though. We “wake up” in adulthood to realize that, without meaning to, without even knowing it was happening, we’ve created a public self that isn’t anything even close to who we really are. Maybe even our closest family or our spouses don’t even know – they only know the front that we have put up since childhood. We find that even we don’t recognize this “false self.” We may have lost touch with our “true self.” If we can even locate, even gain access to that buried true self we’re not sure how to be that person any longer. We still are convinced that who we really are is still unacceptable, unlovable. We become stuck with our Bad Portrait.

Therapy, the kind of therapy I do, can be used as a process through which to rediscover our true selves. We explore our childhood experiences and our here-and-now experiences. Within the safe space of the therapy room, patients tentatively give voice to what is deepest and truest within themselves. When they find that the true part is acceptable, they repeat the cautious experiment. They begin a process that uncovers the forces within and without that led them to hide that honest true self behind the Bad Portrait.

12/07/2017

I was fortunate enough to live for many years in an antebellum house on the banks of the beautiful Wabash River in Indiana. It was my pleasure to walk along the banks nearly every day and wade the shallow parts of the river when I could. The river was peaceful and slow moving, but punctuated here and there with gravel-bottomed shallows where the mussels could be found. I took lots and lots of photographs of this wonderful place. The photo shown here I took while on one of my wading excursions looking for mussels. If you’ve never seen a live mussel on the bottom of a river, they’re difficult to spot. As with many things for which we “hunt”, once you finally identify a mussel on the river bottom, you see them everywhere. Once you’ve seen them, you never forget what they look like. This photograph and that experience of finding my first mussel bring to mind the process of psychotherapy: within the safe, private space of the therapy room, my patients explore the hidden pools of their own true selves. We go where patients intuitively know to go. Together we wade carefully and intentionally, looking for what has never been seen, what has never been acknowledged. Within that small space, during that brief hour, week after week, we discover desires, hurts, wishes, flaws, strengths and aspirations that hide just below the surface. Once it is seen it cannot be un-seen. Just as the river mussel sat waiting to be found, through this process of psychotherapy patients find clarity to see what was always there, unrecognized, unacknowledged, within themselves.

06/15/2017

The therapy space.

03/18/2017

I'm very pleased to announce the opening of my private practice on the north side of Indianapolis, IN. Please visit my website drmichaeljonespsych.com for more information. Follow me on Twitter .

I offer personalized psychotherapy to adults and elder adults looking for help with a wide spectrum of needs – self-exploration, urgent personal challenges, and serious mental illness. My experience includes working with people struggling with persistent mental illness, trauma, personality disorders...