In Save Time and Money in Psychotherapy: A Four Part Series, I discuss important ways you can save time and money in the therapeutic process.
Talking About the Therapy Process is Essential
Being able to talk about what comes up in the therapy relationship is essential to getting the most out of therapy. I believe the most effective therapy is collaborative. Collaboration is important because it’s not always possible to know what another person is experiencing; without this knowledge, therapy is less likely to be effective. This may seem obvious, and you might ask why I’m spelling it out. Whether or not you as a client bring up issues you face directly with your therapist, there will be times when clients the therapist act in unconscious patterned ways.
One typical pattern is a client who tries to accomplish as much as possible during the session, but what gets missed is the opportunity to fully integrate what’s most important about what they are talking about. I might say something like, You’re like the energizer bunny who gets a lot done but never has a chance to get nurtured by his accomplishments. This happens in here and might have something to do with why you feel so unsatisfied by your relationships outside of here. Let’s find out what makes you tend to push yourself so hard.
Another system might occur with a client who often feels burdened and responsible in relationships. He worries that he will upset others, so he tries not to, “rock the boat”, and as a result become overly compliant. It would be easy to duplicate this pattern in a therapy session which would give us the opportunity to explore and seek new options in regards to a dynamic that also happens outside of therapy. I might say, “You said yes so quickly to the question I asked you. I felt a lot of energy in your yes, but I wasn’t sure if that energy was there to take care of me, or yourself”. In order to explore this more deeply, I might invite the client to become more mindful while I ask the same question again, and have them notice what happens inside in high resolution detail. Mindfulness helps people gain exponentially more information from their insides in mindfulness than from regular conversation modes.
In all of these cases, it is useful to name and what is happening in mindfulness, and collaborate to find ways to keep the therapy most relevant and useful to you as the client.
Read part one: Save Time and Money in Psychotherapy: How to Be a Client
Read part two: Save Time and Money in Psychotherapy: Mindfulness
Read part four: Save Time and Money in Psychotherapy: Resourcing Clients
