How does it work?
Psychotherapy can help patients deal with their problems and relieve the related stress, anxiety and discomfort. Its main goal is to help people gain a clearer understanding of what causes or triggers their pain and suffering, in order to enhance personal resources, abilities and coping skills, and especially to improve their self-awareness.
Methodological Approach
During her career, Gaia Polloni has worked with a variety of methodological approaches, such as psychoanalysis, behaviourism, cognitivism and systemic family therapy. Though she often incorporates aspects of different approaches in her clinical practice, she favours the cognitive constructivist post-rationalist approach (Guidano, Liotti, Mahoney).
This last approach defines patients as the true experts of themselves, as they are the only ones in contact with their inner worlds, and it attempts to discover the manner by which people read or define themselves, their stories and the world around them. Therefore, the ways by which patients remember experiences and the meanings they attach to those memories become valuable tools for post-rationalist psychotherapists
Working primarily with emotions, the main goal of this kind of psychotherapy is to improve and broaden self-awareness and to enhance the understanding of our internal dynamics, and of how we build and behave in relationships with others
The therapeutic relationship is seen as a primary tool for exploration, where the therapist, going back to Bowlby’s Attachment Theory, represents a secure base: an attachment figure who will encourage the exploration of thoughts and emotions in a non-judgmental and empathic setting.
Being an EMDR Therapist, Gaia Polloni integrates this integrative psychotherapy approach into her clinical practice, together with other somatic therapies, such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.