A Look at My Sessions Today: Creativity and Coffee Shop Sessions

Psychologist and author Dr. Jeffrey Kottler, in his bestselling book “On Being A Therapist,” speaks of his creative, outside-the-box “coffee shop sessions.”

He describes his “coffee shop session” as innovative and experimental that keeps things fresh and exciting. He refers to it as creating “novel interaction experiences, the kind that produce lasting changes.”


After holding office in Makati for years before, I once discovered how I’d missed out on some exciting things in life. I was sedentary and stuck in a cubicle while those I saw were having adventures out there!

I ended up asking myself, “Am I going to spend the rest of my life in this room?”

Since my relocation to a different urban area, I’ve decided to do therapy only through my “walks and talks.”  In the coffee shops, hotels, parks, and other natural daily places where I travel and where people actually live their lives.

At this point in my life, I am certainly one of those near-approaching aging or elderly status who now have time to put my knowledge and gifts to more creative use outside the traditional office.

I remember holding a family therapy session in front of a beautiful seashore and tourist beach. All 10 or more members of the family were there actively engaging as if energized by the cool winds and waves around us!

The aging patriarch, center of the family’s concern, perfectly recalled what we processed during what he referred to as his family’s “beach sessions.”

Later, the family invited me to extended sessions in coffee shops, and finally bringing me to their home and showing me around their lovely town.

Mostly, I’m now preferring to do my best work this way as my years advance. It’s natural therapy. Anti-ageing too!

Such creativity in the therapy process appears to work better going through an impasse, building deeper therapeutic trust and alliance, fostering greater openness and overall sense of natural healing and well being.

Coffee shop sessions, anyone?

Let it awaken that sense of yourself as an explorer to heal and enrich your life. It comes from stretching your self in new and different ways that help you grow naturally in wisdom and creativity.

It’s been my inspiration to make this a vital part of my personal life and professional mission.

I invite you to join me in this exciting journey onwards ...

(More info:  Psychotherapy in the Coffee Shop ...  Psychology of Coffee ... 9 Health Benefits of Coffee ... Harvard Study on Coffee)

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