How is therapy effective when you (typically) only talk for one hour per week?

Question

How is therapy effective when you (typically) only talk for one hour per week?

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Answer 1

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.