what to expect from therapy

Individual counseling and psychotherapy can help you achieve the insight and awareness you need to create the changes you seek. How much change depends on how engaged you are in your therapy. There are a few factors that can help you maximize how much you get out of being in therapy and how much change carries over into your daily life.

1) Therapy is a place for self-exploration. It's not to learn some secret about how to change others. There is no secret. Change is self-motivated and comes from within.

2) Therapy is work. It requires your full participation as a client to achieve the best outcome possible for you. A therapist's education, knowledge, and experience enables them to be an effective guide for you to do the work you need to do to achieve the outcome you are seeking. 

3) Therapy can help you change how you think, change your perspective, or change what you're doing or how you are approaching another person or situation. The key words here are "can help," and this goes back to #2- how much it helps depends on how much work and effort you put into the process.

4) Sometimes our thoughts and beliefs can become deeply entrenched in emotion, which can obstruct our ability to be objective. Be willing to try out something different than you’ve been doing, and open minded to consider thinking from an alternative perspective. It is important that you are receptive to feedback, and your therapist should be receptive to your feedback as well. This receptiveness can be a powerful driver of of personal growth and change.

5) If something does not feel right it’s up to you to speak up about it. All therapists are trained to listen to their clients, understand their clients point of view, and respect a client's boundaries.

6) Be honest with your therapist and most importantly honest with yourself. Therapy can often reveal both comfortable as well as uncomfortable truths. The latter are not always easy, and sometimes it seems better to avoid them. It’s not. But, you are investing time and money into your therapy, so avoidance will only serve to waste both. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but addressing these truths and doing something different with them can lead to a sense of relief, and dramatic changes in your life that feel much better.

7) Willingness to accept responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and actions. Personal responsibility is an integral aspect of a positive therapy outcome.

8) The best therapy is collaborative. Research shows time and again that when clients actively collaborate with their therapist it leads to better therapy outcomes. Your therapist is knowledgeable and educated, but your feedback is extremely valuable for your therapist and to achieve the best outcome possible. It is normal to feel uncomfortable at first, as you are getting to know how your therapist works, and he/she is getting to know you. Know that your feedback and active participation not only help your therapist get to know you better, but also ensures a better therapy process for you.

9) Be willing to take action. Therapy boils down to two things. Insight and Behavior Change. Insight is great, emotionally and intellectually interesting, but unless you do something with that insight you are not going to see a lot of change.