Can you be really “good” at therapy? What are the qualities of the clients who get the most out of sessions? We posed these questions to our team of therapists at a recent staff meeting and discussed what advice we’d give to new and longtime clients.
Choose A Therapist; Trust Your Instincts
First, it’s important to be connected to the right therapist. The team at Loyal Blue is generally a goal-oriented bunch, and we understand clients who are eager to feel better. We also have a wise and helpful practice coordinator, Kim, who is excellent at making matches between our clients and therapists. Look at profiles, have a consultation call, and choose a therapist who feels relatable. This does not necessarily mean the therapist have be youthful, experienced, or similar in gender or life experience. You want someone whose personality and approach are a match with what you have to say and feel. Some clients want to do most of the talking; others want a more active therapist — even someone who will interrupt and stop them from trailing into potential unproductive comments. For some therapists, there is no such thing as unproductive comments.
We recommend choosing a therapist who has training in cognitive behavioral therapy. Even if you spend time looking at your life from various angles, you will know that your therapist shares a solution-focused mindset and has tools for the most effective treatment of many issues. You also want a therapist who can treat the topic you’d like to discuss. Be sure to ask in an introductory call how your therapist works with a particular topic and what you might expect from sessions.
Ask Questions Early & Often
Our therapist Christina encourages clients to be open, sharing what they like or don’t like when it comes to opening up about thoughts and feelings or a previous therapy experience. Therapists should always ask, “What have you tried already to solve this issue? What has worked a little, or not at all?” We know that you usually have tried many things before seeking counseling, and want to know about your experience.
As sessions progress, continue to provide evaluations back to your therapist. At Loyal Blue we have Session Feedback Forms on each therapist’s profile in order to help you evaluate how things are going. Our therapist Tara encourages self-advocacy from her clients. We keep age-appropriate evaluation scales in our offices, and our clinical director Jenya reaches out to all new clients after the first month to ensure sessions are productive and meeting expectations. A good therapist will want to know what to spend more time on, and be able to measure progress along the way.
Perhaps most importantly is a point made by our therapist Emmy. She notes that therapy takes focus and will feel like work. “You will work just as hard as the therapist; there is an effort-fulness to effective sessions,” she says. Pay attention and speak up in session. “Notice what you’re hesitating to say, and any internal dialogue that is you shoving things down or telling you ‘that’s not important to mention,'” she says. A therapist will bookmark what you say and help decide if it’s worth paying attention to.
Attendance Is Very Important
More than half of all clients leave counseling before their treatment goals are met. This is something we actively strive to eliminate in our practice! Loyal Blue recommends 6-10 sessions to establish a baseline of understanding and solving presenting problems. However, to really integrate new behavior and meet secondary goals (which can be more rewarding than relieving the initial crisis or presenting issue), closer to 20 sessions is a good number of meetings to aim for. For couples, regular sessions are especially important because so much happens in two people’s lives and the thousands of tiny interactions on a day to day basis can allow for rapid progress while meeting regularly.
While we welcome clients who cannot attend every week, we recommend weekly sessions for the first 6 weeks. We shift to non-weekly sessions when clinically indicated, but showing up to weekly appointments is one of the best ways to get the most out of therapy.
Our family therapist Eric adds, “Just showing up to therapy says you care about getting what you can out of it. You are building a relationship with an ally for your well-being. That allows you to set aside pressure and expectations and trust that getting to session is a big part of getting better.”
Use A Notebook & Practice What You Learn
This is a simple and effective pillar of effective therapy! We offer clients notebooks to track our sessions, do cognitive therapy homework, journal, or jot down thoughts for next time. Especially during the pandemic, when so many sessions were conducted by video, we recommended pausing after session and closing your computer to write down any thoughts or feelings that stand out from the session. We have incorporated this into our in person sessions now, too. Pause in your car or stay in the waiting room an extra minute to make some notes. Don’t wait!
Therapists will sometimes assign homework as a way to get more out of therapy. Sometimes this homework is an experiment or idea that the client helps create for themselves. For example, they might choose to practice a social skill during the week at school, or use a tool to calm down when something upsetting happens. It is very important to practice what you learn in therapy so we can know what works and what needs to be adjusted. There are no bad grades in the therapy room, just ideas that haven’t been tried yet. We want you to report back on what works! Keep in mind new habits and approaches can take a few weeks to see results. Just as you didn’t develop a mental health challenge overnight, so too will solutions take some time to take hold.
Our therapist Marcus closes most of his sessions by asking how the time was for his clients. Was it helpful? What were some takeaways? What might be discuss next time? What will you practice this coming week?
Trust The Process (say all of our therapists!)
10 out of 10 of our therapists agree that this attitude will help you get the most from therapy. Yes, you can find the right therapist, provide regular feedback, show up every week, and practice what you learn. All of these will set you on the path to success. But what happens if you’re not finding resolution to your depression, or still experience anxiety more regularly than you’d like?
“There’s value in the process just as much as the final outcome,” says Naomi, one of our young child specialists. “We don’t always know what we need to learn. Learning happens in the ups and downs along the way to reaching goals.” Therapists are patient people, so pay attention to your therapist’s comments as they guide you or your child through perceived setbacks or relapses. This is also a good time for perspective (and looking back in your notebook to see how far you’ve come!)
Seeing therapy as a process allows us to practice an important skill: tolerating impatience, disappointment, and frustration. These are understandable feelings when we experience a setback or don’t feel better faster. But they are also a good sign — that our miseries are not meant to be with us and that we are motivated to find a way out. Return to the pillars in this article and see where you might rededicate yourself. Progress at this moment will almost always involve going outside of your comfort zone. It might look like allowing a natural consequence to befall you or your child. Or it may be facing a fear in order to grapple with a lesser, more surmountable challenge which lies beyond.
Our trauma specialist Megan tells her clients that their goals are like an “anchor that we return to. We may dip into this and that to learn certain tools in order to get where we want to be, but trust we’ll be back to our goals.” ⚓️
