How to Get the Most out of your Therapy
Finding success in your therapy is a joint venture between you and your therapist. It’s as important to find the right fit with a therapist as it is to put in the work towards your goals. You could have the most skilled therapist in the world, but if you don’t put in your part, you would still be dissatisfied in the outcome. Psychologists do years of schooling to earn their license and to learn effective approaches to therapy, but very few patients have ever explicitly been taught how to effectively use therapy. This page provides a bit of direction on how to make the most of your therapy experience with me.
Stay focused on goals
Be honest with yourself, and your therapist, as much as possible
Work on goals between sessions
Use therapy as a training ground for life
Use a therapy log
Use therapy to empower yourself, rather than to get advice
Be patient with the process
Know, and stay focused on your goals:
Therapy is most effective when it is focused on a specific goal. Ask yourself what you want to see changed as a result of therapy, and stay focused on this intention. I encourage my clients to write their goals down to make them more concrete. When showing up to therapy feels like a struggle (which it inevitably will) you can remind yourself of this goal to remember why it is worth showing up and doing the work.
Therapy does at times wander to explore different related aspects of your life, and that is OK. It's not uncommon for clients to lose track of their goals and to start to do “topic of the week” therapy. That is, where they just talk about whatever is new in life that week whether it is relevant to their underlying goals or not. This type of therapy rarely leads to the results clients are coming to therapy for. To avoid this, before your session, check in with yourself about what you need from therapy that day and how you feel about your progress towards your goals.
Be as honest as you can be:
In our day-to-day conversations it is typical, if not expected, that we will lie. We sugarcoat, we leave out details that make us look bad, and we withhold our judgmental and critical thoughts of others. We lie for the sake of social etiquette and to protect our self-image. In fact, those who do not follow these norms are often seen as socially inept! However, therapy requires us to put these norms aside and to more honest. In therapy, trying to protect your self-image will only hold back your progress.
Here are some ways being more honesty can help improve your therapy.
When you struggle to implement something talked about in session, if you disclose this I can help you explore and perhaps understand why you are struggling and find solutions. At the very least, I can help you to feel understood and validated in your actual experience, rather than leaving you feeling like you are struggling AND isolated in the struggle.
When you didn’t understand or agree with something I say, letting me know means we get to diver deeper on that topic, improve your own understanding or perhaps correct something I didn’t understand about you and your values. I get things wrong all the time, don't hesitate to let me know!
If there is something you are embarrassed of, and that you typically hide from others, talking about it can help you to dispel that shame and start to work on it. This is one of the most powerful effects of therapy, reducing shame and helping people to work on the hidden burdens they have been carrying.
Therapy is the perfect place to practice being more open and honest about yourself. I am a therapist because I want to help others, you can trust that I am not here to judge or criticize you. I’ve heard so many different struggles that I’ve come to know how much we ALL struggle in unique ways. The specifics of our challenges are unique but the themes are very similar.
One mistake I see made in therapy is when clients wait for me to unearth something they already know. I definitely do not have a crystal ball, and I’m probably not a better lie detector than anyone else, that’s not what you are paying me for! The more you can disclose to me about yourself and your struggles to more I will be able to help you go further in your self-improvement.
Work on your goals between sessions:
If there is one thing that most consistently predicts whether a client feel successful in therapy, it is when they tell me they are trying new things between our sessions. This is by far the best thing you can do to enhance your therapy. When you come to an important insight find a way to put in into practice! Treat them like experiments, pay attention to your experience, how you felt, what happened, and what the outcome was.
Think of it this way, the problems you are going to therapy to figure out have often been in place for years, one hour a week talking about those patterns will not change them. We need experience and time to build new patterns. Therapy can help you to learn new approaches but it is up to you to practice them. This leads me to the next two tips:
Treat therapy like a training ground:
Part of what makes therapy so effective in creating change, is that it provides you with a safe relationship in which to try out new ways of relating. Because I am not connected to your life, or other relationships, you don’t have to worry as much about my judgment. You will also come to know that I am truly here to help and not to pass judgment over time.
For example, a very common goal in therapy is learning to regulate strong emotions better (such as intense anger, sadness, anxiety, etc). Letting yourself be angry, speak angrily, act angry can be scary in front of people in your life, especially if you feel unskilled in this. I am here to help and won’t take your strong emotions personally. I can help you to regulate and learn to express strong emotions in healthy ways. I can provide feedback and help you to see how you are coming off to others, I can guide you towards improved understanding and expression of your feelings.
Think of therapy like a swimming pool where you can learn new swimming strokes safely before taking them out into the open water of life.
Use a therapy log:
First, write down your primary goals for therapy. You can refer back to these to help keep yourself on track in later sessions.
Next, write a couple sentences after your sessions about what you discussed and what stuck with you. If you write down the ideas you come to in therapy you are far more likely to remember and implement them in your life.
You can also use this log to write down noteworthy experiences working on your goals between sessions, or difficult challenges you came across that you want to discuss further. This will help you to see your own progress, as well as to provide information we can use in session that can lead to greater understanding.
Use therapy for self-empowerment, not advice:
As an existential focused therapist, I believe we are each individually responsible for our own decisions in life. At times this responsibility can feel so burdensome that we look to others to take over for us, telling us what to do or how to think. Therapy is no exception, I can relate to the feeling of just wanting someone to tell us the right answer! However, I believe it much more valuable to increase our self-confidence and ability to make difficult decisions.
I will help you to develop your own decision-making skills and to trust yourself more. I don’t give much direct advice on dilemmas and decisions, not because I’m trying to withhold something from you, but because I know you are the best person to make decisions about your own life. You aren’t coming to me to find out how I would live your life!
Bring your dilemmas to therapy. We will dissect them together and will deepen your understanding of why you are stuck, clarify your options, and will work to improve your confidence in your eventual decision. This is not to say I won’t give new perspectives or novel options, I will! But these are not given as “correct answers” to your problems, just as additional possibilities for you to consider and check against your own values.
Be patient with the process:
Therapy works well, but it often works slowly. The therapy that has the most lasting long-term effect is often made of gradual changes that build on each other, not big intense insights that miraculously change everything.
If you are putting in the work in and out of session you will see improvements. Be consistent with your sessions and expect normal ups and downs in your progress. Check in our your progress towards your goals every so often to make sure we are tracking towards improvement.
Let me know when you feel yourself getting close to your goals so we can plan to end sessions. I want my clients to plan to stop therapy when they have reached the goals that they set out to reach. I'll write more about how to wrap up therapy in another page.