How is therapy effective when you (typically) only talk for one hour per week?
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As someone who’s been in therapy for the last couple of years, it’s a cumulative effect. It’s kinda like how as a student you typically only do one module for an hour or so a week, but at the end of a semester you’ve learnt a lot. The space inbetween sessions is also important to implement and think about what’s been said
Different therapies have different methods / angles of attack. A common one is reframing certain ways of thinking. A therapy session will involve education about the method, the gyst of how it works etc, and then will run through a particular thought or thought pattern the patient is having, and slowly apply the reframing method to that thought for the rest of the hour. This one thought may get worked on over several sessions. But as u/natdass said, “The space inbetween sessions is also important to implement and think about what’s been said.” So as you’re learning to apply the reframing method to one thought over a few weeks your brain starts to recognise other thoughts that might fit the reframing method as well and over time it snowballs.
It’s kind of like if you were stuck with hundreds of strings attached to you in different ways, and the strings were made of different things. You learn how to deal with one particular string, and at first you may need the therapist to do most of the work because you’re so tied up. Once you get one hand free you may know how to remove a certain type of string, do you get to work on those, some with the therapist and some by yourself. This frees you up a bit more but then you find there’s a particular string stopping you going further that’s different to the ones you’ve already removed. So your therapist works through that one with the slowly and helps you start to undo those as well. Over time not only do you get free-er, and faster at recognising and removing strings, you also get faster at learning how to undo new strings. Even if a new string type is completely different you are still more familiar with the process and what movements you may have to do etc.
I really wish I started engaging in therapy sooner, but I don’t dwell on it. I’m just glad I’ve done what I’ve done and have come as far as I’ve come. I know even if each string doesn’t feel freeing at the time, it all adds up.
As someone who’s been in therapy for the last couple of years, it’s a cumulative effect. It’s kinda like how as a student you typically only do one module for an hour or so a week, but at the end of a semester you’ve learnt a lot. The space inbetween sessions is also important to implement and think about what’s been said
As someone who’s been in therapy for the last couple of years, it’s a cumulative effect. It’s kinda like how as a student you typically only do one module for an hour or so a week, but at the end of a semester you’ve learnt a lot. The space inbetween sessions is also important to implement and think about what’s been said
A lot of it is structured around a formalized methodology or “model” like, the “linehan model” (developed by Marsha Linehan I think) that gives you tools (emotionally / mentally) to put to use in everyday life. Even workbooks and reading material, to take that one hour session with you for the week and expand on it in your personal time.
The first session is often your life map or family map or something, health etc. You unpack all of your background for them so they have context for the rest of your treatment plan. So the first session is more of an intake.
I always love how therapists listen to you, and respond with really good questions that make you think.
I miss therapy.
Different therapies have different methods / angles of attack. A common one is reframing certain ways of thinking. A therapy session will involve education about the method, the gyst of how it works etc, and then will run through a particular thought or thought pattern the patient is having, and slowly apply the reframing method to that thought for the rest of the hour. This one thought may get worked on over several sessions. But as u/natdass said, “The space inbetween sessions is also important to implement and think about what’s been said.” So as you’re learning to apply the reframing method to one thought over a few weeks your brain starts to recognise other thoughts that might fit the reframing method as well and over time it snowballs.
It’s kind of like if you were stuck with hundreds of strings attached to you in different ways, and the strings were made of different things. You learn how to deal with one particular string, and at first you may need the therapist to do most of the work because you’re so tied up. Once you get one hand free you may know how to remove a certain type of string, do you get to work on those, some with the therapist and some by yourself. This frees you up a bit more but then you find there’s a particular string stopping you going further that’s different to the ones you’ve already removed. So your therapist works through that one with the slowly and helps you start to undo those as well. Over time not only do you get free-er, and faster at recognising and removing strings, you also get faster at learning how to undo new strings. Even if a new string type is completely different you are still more familiar with the process and what movements you may have to do etc.
I really wish I started engaging in therapy sooner, but I don’t dwell on it. I’m just glad I’ve done what I’ve done and have come as far as I’ve come. I know even if each string doesn’t feel freeing at the time, it all adds up.
Different therapies have different methods / angles of attack. A common one is reframing certain ways of thinking. A therapy session will involve education about the method, the gyst of how it works etc, and then will run through a particular thought or thought pattern the patient is having, and slowly apply the reframing method to that thought for the rest of the hour. This one thought may get worked on over several sessions. But as u/natdass said, “The space inbetween sessions is also important to implement and think about what’s been said.” So as you’re learning to apply the reframing method to one thought over a few weeks your brain starts to recognise other thoughts that might fit the reframing method as well and over time it snowballs.
It’s kind of like if you were stuck with hundreds of strings attached to you in different ways, and the strings were made of different things. You learn how to deal with one particular string, and at first you may need the therapist to do most of the work because you’re so tied up. Once you get one hand free you may know how to remove a certain type of string, do you get to work on those, some with the therapist and some by yourself. This frees you up a bit more but then you find there’s a particular string stopping you going further that’s different to the ones you’ve already removed. So your therapist works through that one with the slowly and helps you start to undo those as well. Over time not only do you get free-er, and faster at recognising and removing strings, you also get faster at learning how to undo new strings. Even if a new string type is completely different you are still more familiar with the process and what movements you may have to do etc.
I really wish I started engaging in therapy sooner, but I don’t dwell on it. I’m just glad I’ve done what I’ve done and have come as far as I’ve come. I know even if each string doesn’t feel freeing at the time, it all adds up.
A lot of it is structured around a formalized methodology or “model” like, the “linehan model” (developed by Marsha Linehan I think) that gives you tools (emotionally / mentally) to put to use in everyday life. Even workbooks and reading material, to take that one hour session with you for the week and expand on it in your personal time.
The first session is often your life map or family map or something, health etc. You unpack all of your background for them so they have context for the rest of your treatment plan. So the first session is more of an intake.
I always love how therapists listen to you, and respond with really good questions that make you think.
I miss therapy.
A lot of it is structured around a formalized methodology or “model” like, the “linehan model” (developed by Marsha Linehan I think) that gives you tools (emotionally / mentally) to put to use in everyday life. Even workbooks and reading material, to take that one hour session with you for the week and expand on it in your personal time.
The first session is often your life map or family map or something, health etc. You unpack all of your background for them so they have context for the rest of your treatment plan. So the first session is more of an intake.
I always love how therapists listen to you, and respond with really good questions that make you think.
I miss therapy.
It gives you time to observe yourself between appointments and practice some of what you learned.
People often have patterns in life that used to work, but now don’t anymore, or the patterns have bad effects that outweigh whatever good there is. Thoughts, feelings, acts, combinations…
Say, you’re smoking and want to quit. You observe when and why you smoke. Is it a social thing, or something you do to get a break at work, is it an attempt to calm down when under stress, something you do at certain moments during the day,…
You share those observations, talk about what might be going on there and where to start practicing something else. You do that for a week, come back, what went well, what didn’t, figure out why it didn’t, what needs to be changed to make this work, which aspect of the problem to tackle next. And back you go to your everyday life, practice some more.
If appointments are too close together you don’t have time to let whatever you worked on sink in and see how you (re-)act.
Sometimes people aren’t stable enough to go a whole week without the support of someone who is neutral but also completely on their side, so they might have appointments spaced closer together. Or do inpatient therapy, which is helpful when they’re either not stable, or their surroundings aren’t and they need to get away from everything first before having the headspace to work on anything.
When things are going better, appointments can be spaced further apart and just used to check in, see whether anything still needs some changes.
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