Therapeutic Process — Transcription
Hi, everyone happy Tuesday and happy December! I can’t believe it’s December already, but it is this week. I had a lot of questions about what Therapy entails. I actually, when I do my initial consult with clients, I get this question a lot. Especially if someone hasn’t been in Therapy before to experience how it works? What do I do? What is this going to look like? It’s a great question and something that I feel like most people don’t realize. There’s a lot of depictions out there of what Therapy is and what it looks like. So I just want to kind of help people know exactly or at least somewhat of what it entails. Every Therapist is different, so everyone has their own process, but I’ll tell you a little bit about mine and what typically happens with the Therapeutic process.
So the first thing that happens is you’re going to reach out to the Therapist. If you’re looking for one a lot of Therapists offer free consultations, some don’t, but some do, or at least, you know, a phone call initially. I offer a free 15 minute video or a phone consultation just so people can get a sense of who I am or who my employees are to make sure that we’re a good fit for them. And we have everything all under control with the logistics before we set up an actual appointment. So if the Therapist offers that consultation, it’ll typically be around 15 minutes. And they’ll just ask you questions, like what brought you to Therapy in the first place?
If there’s any safety concerns, what your insurance is, if you’re you’re using insurance or if you are doing sliding scale what fee that would be for you? So some of the logistics are ironed out through there. Availability, what days or times you’re looking for in terms of scheduling, things like that. So the Therapist can get a sense of if they feel like it’s going to work out or if they need to refer them to somebody else with either different availability or different insurance or whatever the case may be. So that’s the initial consultation.
If there is a fit then you would set up an initial appointment. So this would be about 55 minutes. And this is going to be basically an assessment for the most part. The first session is more of the Therapist getting to know the backgrounds of, you know, your childhood, your medical history, if there is any of your mental health history, if there is any just really kind of digging deep into your past experiences and your present experiences, the symptoms that you’ve been having anything that has been going on recently in terms of stressors, any traumas you’ve been through, anything like that, to help them get a sense of how we can guide the sessions more moving forward. After the initial assessment, you and the Therapist are going to develop some treatment goals.
These goals are really just to guide the Therapeutic process so we can help you as your Therapist figures out what kind of goals you want to work towards within Therapy and outside of Therapy. And then try to reach these goals with you throughout the sessions. These are concrete goals where you have to kind of pick these goals, and then they’re your only goals you have throughout the process. I always tell clients, you know, these are flexible!
So if a goal that you have no longer exists or you’ve reached that goal, or it’s just not relevant anymore, then we would just get rid of that goal and maybe create a new one. Or if something new comes along and you really want to work towards that, then we would create a new one for that as well. Certain goals might be like managing symptoms of anxiety or depression working towards time management skills learning more coping skills, things like that.
Those are some goals that are kind of common in the Therapeutic process. And again, you and the Therapist will come up with these together. So don’t feel any pressure that you have to have these, you know, before the first session, after the initial session and treatment goals are determined, then you start just working towards those goals. So most sessions after that are just going to be around 50 to 55 minutes and the Therapist and you will work towards working towards those goals that you’ve created. And just kind of talking from there.
The first few sessions are really just making sure that we’re building rapport and you’re feeling comfortable with us. And we’re feeling comfortable with you learning more about you and how you work, things like that. So we really want to help you to feel comfortable in these situations and in this process, because if you don’t feel comfortable or confident that there’s a good connection there, then it probably won’t work the way that you want it to.
So it’s really important to feel a connection with your Therapist. And if for some reason, you know, you go a couple sessions and you’re like, I just don’t feel like this is a good fit. It doesn’t mean that Therapy isn’t for you. There’s so many Therapists out there with so many different techniques and ways of doing things that sometimes it just doesn’t work with one person. So it’s okay to say, you know, I think I need to find someone maybe that fits a little better. And again, that’s why that initial consult can be really helpful because sometimes you can rule that out in the beginning.
So if that happens, I really encourage you to just be honest with the Therapist. I’ve had that happen and I don’t take it personally. Some people just don’t fit well with the style that I have and that’s okay. It’s nothing against me. It’s just the way that they feel most comfortable. And realistically you want to feel the most comfortable in a setting where you’re going to be talking about some of the hardest things that you’ve been through in your life. So just really think about, you know, what kind of fit you want and get to know the Therapist to see if that seems like a good fit. And hopefully it is. And then you can continue with them.
Hopefully this sheds some light on what the Therapeutic process looks like. And again, each Therapist is different, so it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the exact way that I explained it. This is just the process that I do that I know that is pretty typical for Therapists. So if your Therapist has a different way of doing it doesn’t mean they’re doing it wrong. It just means they do it a little bit differently. So have a good rest of your week and have a good first day of December. And I will see you all next week! Thanks!