Psychotherapy Isn’t Rocket Science (It’s Trickier)
Tragicomic note up front: psychology has been wrestling with a replication crisis for years, and psychotherapy’s average results are… mixed. Helpful for many, underwhelming for many, miraculous for a few. That’s the honest backdrop.
If we’re honest, we haven’t come that far
We like to pretend we’ve outrun the confessional, the Delphic oracle, the village healer. Have we? We’ve changed the furniture and the vocabulary. The human problems—grief, love, fear, meaning—keep wearing new hats.
What actually works (in my experience)
- Transformational presence. A strong, steady personality you can borrow nervous-system regulation from. Someone who looks you in the eye and you feel yourself changing.
- Doing something meaningful and different. Not just talking about change—enacting it.
- Clients who rip off band-aids. If you want growth more than you want comfort, therapy tends to work.
What doesn’t (or makes things worse)
Endless self-circling. Therapy can become a refined form of narcissism if we collect insights like stamps without changing our relationships or habits. I’ve known people who spent years in modalities (trauma therapy, psychedelics, analysis—you name it) and came out more fragile in ordinary relating.
Therapy is about adaptation
Adaptation to what? To relating: to people, to work, to the culture we actually live in. If you’re looking for capital-T Truth, therapy often disappoints. If you’re looking to show up differently in your relationships, therapy can be powerful.
Sometimes the best therapy feels like a conversion
The rare sessions feel like a small death and a small resurrection. A visitation. Why not call it sacred? Personally, my big shifts didn’t come in therapy. They arrived through other practices (meditation, mostly). Your mileage may vary.
My lane: Relational Gestalt (a kind of hyper-meditation)
Think of it as meditation with another human being—live, moment-to-moment:
- Instead of disappearing inward, we track what’s happening between us in real time.
- We bring what’s usually unconscious into awareness—habits of attention, breath, posture, words unsaid.
- You practice this awareness with me and then notice it “out there” in your everyday life.
- Over time, what used to run you in the background becomes choice.
Who I’m for
- People who are ready to pull the band-aid and change how they relate.
- Folks whose main suffering shows up in relationships—too few, too intense, too distant, too fused.
- Anyone who prefers straight talk, collaboration, and experiments over jargon.
What working together looks like
- We name what hurts and what you want.
- We try things—micro-experiments in awareness, voice, boundaries, breath, movement.
- We watch the real you show up. We keep what works; we drop what doesn’t.
- You take it into your life and report back. We iterate.
If you want therapy that’s gentle but not vague, direct but not harsh—and you’re willing to do the uncomfortable, meaningful thing—I’m here for that.
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Daniel Hinojo — Relational Psychotherapy & Gestalt
Berlin • English • Español • Deutsch