Tips to Help You Make the Most of Your Therapy Sessions
For those who are getting ready for mental health therapy, the most important question is: “how can I benefit the most from therapy?” I have five tips for clients who are getting ready for this journey with their therapist.
1. Seek support
This may be obvious, after all, you’re here for therapy. Of course, you’re seeking support. Let me give you an example to explain this.
When you have a physical illness, you go to see the doctor for professional support. Meanwhile, you might need:
a friend to drive you to the hospital if you are too sick.
your boss's support by asking for some days off.
your partner or a parent or a friend to come over to cook for you or help you do the chores or assist you in rehabilitation exercises.
While a lot of people these days have difficulty asking for help, those who do ask, have a higher chance of recovering faster and showing gratitude to their supporters sooner.
Mental health is no different. The only difference is that the illness, the wound, is less visible. Examples of seeking support include:
educating your family and friends about mental health,
letting them know your needs, triggers, and struggles.
discussing with them areas where they can be helpful.
For example, you may need help with
practicing communication skills
developing a healthy daily routine
chores for a period of time before your regain the mental energy to take care of things
This is easier said than done, of course. Especially when seeking support is technically difficult or mentally stressful. Yet, a client taught me: “you can always do something, which is always better than doing nothing.”
2. Practice self-care
Again, when you are physically sick, you try your best to take care of yourself. You remember to drink water, eat healthier, rest more, and take a break from work or school. In therapy, you are either processing something really painful, trying to learn more effective and healthier coping strategies, or you are stretching your comfort zone. The stretch requires mental energy and psychological resources.
One of the best ways to create psychological resources is through self-care. Intentionally create experiences that most likely bring desirable emotions, self-compassion, and relaxation. Do things that you like, things that you enjoy, and things that help you relax. When experiencing comfortable emotions, the border of our comfort zone is more relaxed and flexible. Stretching becomes easier. We are more resourceful and creative, more ready to develop new coping strategies and new thought processes.
3. Find out the things that work
This may sound counter-intuitive. Most of the time, we believe that we must pay attention to the problem and bring it to therapy to fix it. I suggest that clients pay a lot of attention to their successes, rather than their failures. We learn from our success and explore in detail what works and how it worked. Instead of learning about the problem in detail, we want to learn about the solution even more. The more familiar we are with the success story, the more awareness and learning we develop around the success story, the higher chance that we recreate the success story in the future.
4. Give your therapist feedback
The next thing that you want to do to make the most of therapy is to let your therapist know what works for you and what does not. You cannot imagine how much a well-trained therapist values honest feedback from clients. A well-trained therapist understands that we need to constantly learn from the client in order to find the best approach. The best therapeutic approach is the one that this specific client most resonates with.
That being said, it can be challenging and stressful for a client to provide honest constructive feedback to their therapist. Therapists are often seen as experts that "should" be able to tell what works and what does not.
I frequently meet with clients who tell me how their previous therapists did not understand them, did not get it, didn't do this, or did something that bothered them. I always want to discuss what I can do and what we can do together to turn disconnection into reconnection. It is definitely a joint effort.
5. Slow down
In therapy, sometimes you might notice that you speak fast, the conversation moves smoothly, and you get to cover a lot of things in a short time. While it does help your therapist gather information more quickly, you might realize that processing experiences, thoughts, and feelings requires one to slow down. When we slow down, that is the moment when we become more curious about ourselves and we develop more awareness and insights that are NEW to us.
In essence, therapy is not about information exchange, it is more about creating new experiences, expanding our repertoire in terms of processing experiences, and responding to experiences.
When you find yourself slowing down, struggling to express yourself, or feeling stuck, that is a sign of a learning moment — a moment when you may be expanding your repertoire.
For example, when a client practices communication with their partner in a different way, it is almost like they are using a different language, new vocabulary, new ways of structuring sentences. It will be slow, new and a learning moment.
Now let's recap.
Seek support from your support system;
put more effort into self-care to enhance desirable emotional states;
take time to learn about your successes;
don't hesitate to let your therapist know when you have concerns about therapy;
feeling stuck is an opportunity for learning.
It can take time to explore which therapeutic approaches and which therapists work best for you. When the fear of therapy not working is so strong, you will likely find evidence to confirm that fear. With that, there is a lower chance to get creative and discover opportunities to find a solution.
I hope that the above tips give you an idea of how you can prepare yourself for therapy to make it work for you!
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Written by: Si Meng, LGPC
Si is a licensed therapist at LifeSpring Counseling Services in Maryland who specializes in trauma, depression, anxiety, life transitions, and mood disorders. She offers multicultural and bilingual services in both English and Mandarin.
Photo Credit: Alex Green, Liza Summer, Gustavo Fring, and Monstera
Date of download: 8/19/2022
