NYC Psychologist
SFT
SELF-Focused Therapy
Brief Description
Nurture + Respect Your SELF =
Self-Empowerment
SFT SELF-Focused Therapy is the psychotherapy conceived and developed by our founder, Dr. Haley. Demonstrated to be highly effective and providing benefits other therapies do not, SFT is currently available only through NYC Psychologist.
You probably have many questions but the most important is this:
"Can SFT help me?"
The answer is simple.
Are you anxious or depressed? Do you feel lost, overwhelmed, unable to cope?
Is it difficult for you to get organized, set priorities, adapt to change?
Are you lonely, shy, afraid to socialize or meet new people? Do you feel good about yourself? Is your self-esteem what it should be?
Is saying "no" to others a problem for you? Are you kind to everyone except yourself? Do you find yourself trying to please others at the cost of your own wants and needs?
Do you seem unable to find healthful, fulfilling relationships?
Is something something stopping you from achieving, perhaps even striving for or identifying your goals and ambitions?
If your answer to any of these questions is "yes" --- SFT was designed to help you.
Using SFT, Dr. Haley has helped many individuals, younger women and men in particular, to lead happier and more fulfilling lives, to feel and do better by empowering their SELVES.
For more information about SFT, read the overview below, see our FAQs, or review the more detailed SFT SELF-Focused Therapy. To learn what Dr. Haley's patients have to say about SFT, read the attestations of her patients.
SFT Overview
SFT is the integrated psychotherapy created by NYC Psychologist's Founder and Resident Psychologist Dr. Rita Haley.
SFT focuses on the whole SELF and thereby works to resolve problems in all areas underlying psychological difficulties and disorders. This is in contrast to reductionist therapies, which reduce their focus and therefore their therapeutic efforts to only one such area.
SFT's more comprehensive view is one of its primary advantages over other therapies. SFT works to restore the whole SELF to healthful, constructive, and fulfilling modes of being and doing.
To understand how SFT works, you must first comprehend the frame upon which it is built.
Shortly after you were born, you started to develop a SELF, which we refer to as your Real SELF. (Initially it was your only SELF.) SFT is based on the recognition, perceived by Dr. Haley, that the environment's lack of acceptance, often more than lack of acceptance -- actual rejection -- of aspects of your Real SELF led you to fear for your survival: You knew you couldn't live if you were abandoned by your caretakers.
Survival Fear caused you yourself to reject those unaccepted aspects of your Real SELF and to create an inauthentic, masking self: Your Objectified Self.
Created to keep you alive and to protect you from experiencing the terror of Survival Fear, your Objectified Self accomplished this objective by constraining, constricting, suppressing and restricting, and ultimately often repressing the rejected aspects of your Real SELF. Unfortunately, the Objectified Self maintains its power and continues to "protect" you from Survival Fear long after your survival no longer depends on caretakers other than You.
The constraint of part of your Real SELF, imposed by your Objectified Self, while initially put in place to protect you, is the cause of your psychological difficulties.
So, you ask, if that's the problem, what the solution? How does SFT work?
Using interventions developed in any and all extant therapies, SFT helps you to re-empower your Rejected Real SELF and disempower your Objectified Self. It provides you with a new way of perceiving your problems and this changed perspective helps you to deal with difficulties during treatment and thereafter.
During the course of treatment with SFT, you free yourself from the tyranny of the rules, the irrational "should"s dictated by the Objectified Self. Your entire Real SELF is empowered. You decide who, what and how you want to be. You become your Real SELF.
Invest in Your SELF with NYC Psychologist and SFT
You will feel and do better sooner
Index of "Choose SFT Therapy" Pages
SFT SELF-Focused Therapy: Brief Description SFT SELF-Focused Therapy: Full Description