As Empathic Therapists:
- We treasure those who seek our help and we view therapy as a sacred and inviolable trust. With humility and gratitude, we honor the privilege of being therapists.
- We rely upon relationships built on trust, honesty, caring, genuine engagement and mutual respect.
- We create a safe space for self-exploration and honest communication by holding ourselves to the highest ethical standards including honesty, informed consent, confidentiality, professional boundaries, and respect for personal freedom, autonomy, and individuality.
- We encourage overcoming psychological helplessness and taking responsibility for emotions, thought, and actions — and ultimately for living a self-determined life.
- We offer empathic understanding and, when useful, we build on that understanding to offer new perspectives and guidance for the further fulfillment of personal goals and freely chosen values.
- When useful, we help to identify self-defeating patterns learned in childhood and adulthood in order to promote the development of more effective choice making and conduct.
- We do not treat people against their will or in any way use coercion, threats, manipulation or authoritarianism.
- We do not reduce others to diagnostic categories or labels — a process that diminishes personal identity, oversimplifies life, instills dependency on authority, and impedes post-traumatic growth. Instead, we encourage people to understand and to embrace the depth, richness, and complexity of their unique emotional and intellectual lives.
- We do not falsely attribute emotional suffering and personal difficulties to genetics and biochemistry. Instead, we focus on each person’s capacity to take responsibility and to determine the course of his or her own life.
- Because children are among our most vulnerable and treasured citizens, we especially need to protect them from psychiatric diagnoses and drugs. We need to offer them the family life, education and moral and spiritual guidance that will help them to fulfill their potential as children and adults.
- Because personal failure and suffering cannot be separated from the ethics and values that guide our conduct, we promote basic human values including personal responsibility, freedom, gratitude, love and the courage to honestly self-evaluate and to grow.
- Because human beings thrive when living by their highest ideals, individuals may wish to explore their most important personal values, including spiritual beliefs or religious faith, and to integrate them into their therapy and their personal growth.
Source: Dr. Peter Breggin, MD