Therapy’s effectiveness is dependent on a number of factors, including the competence of the provider. I will focus on that which the client can do to maximize their progress. I could go the whole “meta study” route that you’re endlessly drilled into doing at grad school for counseling but let’s skip that for now. There are plenty of articles like that on the Internet!
If you’re skeptical of therapy itself, proceed no further and give my recent article Handling Objections To Therapy a gander. There’s a link there to a meta study showing that therapy works, for those who value such things. Then come back here and give us a whirl.
What follows is three things I believe can help those on the client side improve the effectiveness of their therapy. These are borne from experience, to one degree or another, and do not necessarily represent the “top” three things you can do. Nor are they the first three that spring to mind. I think I wrote an article close to a decade ago that was more oriented toward a “Top 3” kind of appraisal. That’s in the archives, somewhere.
#1: Journaling Between Sessions
In attempting to break old programming and ancient patterns set into your psyche, you’re going to need to unpackage yourself using language. The first way to do this is through journaling. I would say that the first way to do it is in personal relationships but people’s empathy resources are pretty low these days. Everything has been stirred up by various banking machinations and mass migrations of peoples. We’re corralled into a kind of individualism by the powers that be and so the touch-off has to be some kind of personal focus. May as well make lemonade and get to journaling.
I have a nifty, brief guide on journaling that I put out over ten years ago now.
Here’s the link: JOURNALING FOR SELF-KNOWLEDGE
The e-book is just $2, a price that hasn’t changed since it was released. I wrote this as a handy dandy resource for those so inclined.
With journaling, LET ER RIP. That’s what I often say now. You can’t be too careful. Just dive in. The more the merrier.
Then, you bring what you journaled about to the session with your therapist. This way you don’t get stage fright, a case of forgetfulness, or whatever else it is that gets you babbling at the beginning and using up precious time ramping up to something more pertinent.
I’m sure I stand by 95% of what I wrote in that journaling guide. If I had to critique it, I would say that it’s too short!
#2: Bring It Into The Session
Much of what happens in therapy is that the client projects onto the therapist, meaning they try to apply the programming and patterns from how they were parented onto the therapist. This is something to be cognizant of, on both sides of the relationship. It’s called “transference”.
The client seeks, unconsciously, to recreate the relationship they had in childhood with their mother or father with the therapist – depending on the sex of the therapist. It’s not personal. It’s programming.
A client does well to figure, “Huh, I’ve been trying to do x, y, or z to my therapist. Why is that?” The client is trying to get their needs met, however imperfectly. Therapists who are worth their salt know how to handle transference and work through any “counter-transference”, which is to say that their own programming may get kicked up by whatever the client is doing.
This should all be handled in session. This should never be handled out of session. Then, things get personal and messy. Most of what passes for “coaching” out on the Internet these days completely disregards this ethical limit (and many others) and quite frankly, all sorts of predatory jackassery happens.
#3: Get Good Sleep
Bad sleep lowers boundaries and makes things messy. To administrate properly to your lower selves, you need your higher resources. This can only happen if you get at least a decent amount of sleep. You can’t compensate with stimulants, exercise, money, mania, confidence tricks, mood altering substances like sugar, energy drinks, or pharmaceuticals . That’s not how it works. Getting “amped up” before a session just means there’s more chaos kicked up. A good therapist will work to scale this back. Remember, social anxiety doesn’t always present in the prototypical depressive, anti-social, inhibitory manner that is depicted in the media and on psychology websites.
Oftentimes, to keep a caring therapist’s ministrations at bay, a client will develop “sleep troubles”. Usually this is the voices of the client’s parents seeking to undermine or degrade the work. If you’ve ever had a bad night of sleep, you know just how degraded your proceeding next two days are. One bad night of sleep doesn’t take you out for just the following day. It takes two days to recover.
So, take care of your sleep! I have loads and loads more I can say on this specific topic but let’s save it for another day.
Unpackaging your heart with language does mean working to master the language, as well. There is no substitute, in terms of disciplining yourself for focus and depth, to reading. You will not get from podcasts what you can get from a non-dictated book. This is what I offer in my books. Give them a read!
CHECK OUT MY AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE
Talk soon!
