Welcome.
Here’s What You Might Want to Know About Therapy at LB Counseling
When considering therapy, you may not have a sense of what needs to happen other than you want to feel better and improve your relationships and responses to circumstances. You may have some general questions or concerns as you make the choice to begin your therapy journey. Here are some things that I have found to be helpful for people to know about therapy:
-
Therapy generally works best within a relationship that fosters and maintains a strong therapeutic working alliance. This alliance requires mutual trust, agreement on goals, and evidence-based tasks and methods that are monitored by the client and therapist for results. Your therapist will explain his or her training and general philosophy and approach to therapy. The approach is flexible and adapts to the shifting insights and circumstances throughout the phases and growth of the therapy relationship.
-
Therapy may involve learning new skills and positive habits such as assertiveness, mindfulness, coping strategies, decision-making, boundaries setting, communication, etc., as well as exploring problems in thinking, feeling, and responding to internal and external conditions.
-
We all resist change. Don’t be surprised if you are tempted to stop coming to therapy right before some real changes or breakthroughs are about to happen. It is important that you and your therapist are open with each other and actively explore ambivalence and fears associated with various stages of change.
-
Becoming more healthy and balanced can feel very unfamiliar and uncomfortable at first. Your therapist will explore your expectations for therapy and help you address thoughts and feelings that arise from changes and growth provoked by the therapy process. “Normal” and “healthy” are sometimes different.
-
Being committed to therapy can change your life. Be prepared to feel some loss from this.
-
Others in your life may resist your changes and growth and they may need time to adapt.
-
Therapy involves work and commitment, and change is hard for all people. It is difficult to face painful memories and situations that are distressing. It requires sustained effort and practice to respond differently to situations that typically trigger emotional disturbance or avoidance. The more effort clients put into the process, in and out of the therapy session, the better and more enduring the positive results typically are.
-
Most therapy is short-term (usually focusing on one issue) and some therapy is longer-term (more than one or complex issues). Your counselor should use session time efficiently, and most therapy relationships should be relatively brief. Sometimes short-term therapy pivots to longer-term therapy when clients learn the difference between feeling better and getting better, or their goals become more existential or lifelong.
-
Expect your therapist to have good boundaries, avoid dual relationships, be ethical, and always treat you with honesty. Your therapist should respect your autonomy and personal choices and will let you know when he or she thinks that your problems are outside of their scope of practice or cannot be adequately addressed by them.
Therapy can be a life-changing journey that is well worth your investment of time, effort, and expense.
