What Type of Therapy Do You Do?
I trained in a humanistic style and I'm primarily a common factors therapist, which is a style of integrative therapy. …
Begin with the end in mind
-Unknown
Some people want therapy indefinitely and think of it as mental hygiene. Others want to resolve what brought them to therapy and move on. Both are fine ways of doing therapy!
What the research says:
- 50% of clients see improvement after 8 sessions
- 75% see improvement after 26 sessions
- 85% see improvement after a year
Note that “improvement” may not mean “feels completely better”, and other research shows that acute symptoms relating to recent difficulties will resolve quicker than symptoms after significant and complex trauma.
What if I’m not getting better?
It can take a few sessions to get settled into therapy, but if your scores of of prior week have stayed the same or declined after 4 sessions, we should check in on whether we should shift techniques, try meeting more often, or something else. If by the 8-10 session mark things are still not improving, we should chat about whether referring you to someone else might be a better choice.
How do I fire my therapist?
I’m happy to give you a script to help end our time working together. Here’s one option: “Hey, Jonobie, I think I’d like to explore working with someone else instead. Do you have any referrals?” I would love if you first bring up something that isn’t working so that we can try to troubleshoot it. But honestly, if therapy with me isn’t working for you, however you choose to end it is just fine. I’m bound by confidentiality, so even if we happen to run into one another out in the world, I won’t bring up the fact that we did therapy together. Less awkward than running into a hairdresser you fired!
How do I end?
Do you feel like you don’t have a lot to talk about each time, or that you’ve worked through whatever you originally wanted to talk about? That’s awesome! I usually recommend that we take one session to talk through what learnings you’ve had from our work together, what markers you’ll use for when to potentially restart therapy, and anything you want to make sure you sustain as you go. We can also do short 1-session check-ins later as needed for “touch ups” or to manage brief and stressful periods.
