Therapy grounded in real inner work and genuine human connection.
You started in therapy. That’s a huge step. A step that took thought, research, and time. Now, you may be asking, “Am I getting what I need from therapy?”. This will be an important question to ask yourself to make sure you are benefiting. Reasons …
Therapy is not cheap. It requires resources. Both time and money, obviously. But in order for it to be as effective as possible, it requires your energy and attention. I think therapy can benefit most people, regardless of how well or how poorly life seems …
There are so many reasons. And, so often we take it personally when someone doesn’t share. We think it means something about us.
Well, sometimes that is true. Very often, it isn’t.
We’ll talk about both sides.
There are so many factors that could contribute why someone is not sharing how they feel with you, regardless of whether the feelings are what you would consider positive (“I’m having fun with you”) or negative (“I’m feeling bothered about xyz”). So, this list is not exhaustive by any means. It’s simply meant to open your perspective.
One factor is whether or not the person is an introvert. Introverts process internally, then are ready to share. An introvert is also more likely to be private or shy, so their temperament might lend itself to not sharing about their internal world as readily.
Another factor is that this is not what they are used to in their family. Sharing feelings or what is happening inside them is just not something that occurs to them to do. It’s not part of how they are used to relating with people close to them. And, it may not be something they are even used to reflecting on, even privately.
Another contributing factor is past experiences in general. They may have had experiences in their past where they have shared and it has not been a positive experience. In fact, those experiences could have been traumatic.
Finally, it is possible that there has been someone who is incredibly emotional in their life, who shared a lot of what occurred internally and this was overwhelming. So it is something they want to avoid.
Again, this list is in no way exhaustive, simply a couple of factors to consider that help open your mind to reasons why someone might not be sharing.
Are you being present when your person is talking with you? Or are you on your phone?
Are you being open and curious?
Are you interrupting? Being critical?
Are you spending enough time with your person that is not filled with “to do”s? Meaning: is there ever space in your interactions to talk about more vulnerable topics?
Start with nice things. “I had fun with you” or “I liked when you said xyz”.
Start just building up the conversation about what is happening between you (process dialogue) instead of always talking about things other than the relationship (content dialogue).
If you want to know more about process vs content dialogue, check out our post on communication here.
Ya. Just ask your person when you are both relaxed (not in the middle of a tense moment) if there is anything that stops them from sharing their thoughts or feelings more often.
So often, this is a result of our temperament and our life experiences, not anything so personal.
And, this is workable by simply understanding your person’s natural ways and creating some safety and practices to share just a little bit more.
Contact us, we’d love to support you.
There are a few basic emotional intelligence concepts coming up that can be helpful as we navigate this territory of the Coronavirus. Let’s lay the groundwork with those. Then, we can talk about 5 helpful thoughts that we can incorporate to how we are thinking …
Aside from “how long does therapy take?”, which was discussed last week, another common question is “how often should I be seeing my therapist?” Again, it depends. So let’s talk about that. What follows applies to those who are coming in for individual, family, couples, …
So I wanted to take a minute to answer them in case you have that question too.
Like most things, the answer is “it depends”. But, I can tell you what factors come into play so you can get an idea for yourself and your own situation.
If you are coming to therapy because you are being proactive, you are probably not as concerned with this question.
One of the reasons you might start therapy proactively is to establish a working relationship with a therapist so you can get some support in looking at and improving some important aspects of your life. The other goal here is to have that relationship established and ready for when challenges do arise. You know this could be a long term relationship and it is an investment.
You might or might not go to therapy as frequently (I’ll talk about that next week), but it is an ongoing process to support your emotional and mental well being.
This is the same for children or adolescents. Sometimes parents will initiate therapy just to start a therapeutic relationship and get in some basic learning around emotional fluency and coping skills for their child or teen. Then their child or teen has a relationship with a therapist so they can access that relationship when developmental challenges come up around friend issues, academic stress, transition to adolescence or launching into adult life.
If you are starting therapy because there is a challenge coming up that you know really needs attention, I would expect at least six months.
The first part of therapy (4-6 weeks of weekly sessions), you are building trust with your therapist and your therapist is getting as full a picture as possible of what is going on. This cannot be skipped. Your therapist needs to know as much as possible to know how to best help you. AND you need to know that you trust your therapist. You are paying for their skill set that will support you in getting where you want to go. If you don’t have that trust, you will not be utilizing all they have to offer you.
From there, you are working on de-programming old beliefs, healing, developing insight into yourself, learning communication and coping skills and developing new habits and ways of dealing with things in your life that will support your growth so you can get through the challenge and be a better, healthier person.
I’ve seen people make it through challenges in as little as six months. Here’s the thing: these are people that are ready to take action on recommendations, who take notes either during session or right after to make sure they get as much as they can out of the time, who are willing to be open to reflections and humble to hard questions. They do the work in and outside of session. It’s the willingness that makes their sessions super effective (read more about that here).
Sometimes, when people make it through a challenge, they like to stay in therapy because they see how much they are able to get out of that support. The frequency of sessions might change over time depending on what is going on. Sometimes people will stop sessions due to the main goal for therapy being met and then they will just come back the next time something comes up. But the effort they put in not only helps them grow through their challenge, it builds their confidence in knowing that they can take on challenges successfully.
The same goes for older school age kids and adolescent clients: being open to and wanting to go to therapy makes a big difference in the process. See these posts here and here about kids and teens who are resistant to therapy.
If you are dealing with a crisis, meaning you are concerned about your own safety and daily functioning or your child’s, there are two distinct parts of your treatment. The first is stabilizing, the second is addressing the underlying dynamics and issues that brought things to a head.
People cannot sustain a crisis level situation for very long, but the work to address what created the crisis can take some time to unravel. There is a lot of variability in situations like this. Especially given that people can go in and out of a crisis state until they stabilize. The best thing to do is buckle up and be receptive to your therapist’s and your team’s (you might have a psychiatrist or multiple therapists working with different members of your family or school therapists working together) recommendations. That will be your fastest way through.
How much stress you have going on in your life does factor in to how long it will take to reach your goals in therapy.
If you have a number of stressors that take away from you being able to dedicate attention to your work in therapy, it might mean that you will need a little bit more time in therapy. That is not a bad thing.
If you have a high level of stress, therapy will address that so you can work to bring things to a more manageable level. This is a good thing for your overall health and well being.
If it is your child or teen who is in therapy, you want to take life circumstances into consideration: do they have a school transition (going to middle school or high school) or family transition (divorce, remarriage, move) going on? Is there a person in the family who is ill? Are there some difficult sibling dynamics? These things may add to the time it takes to make progress toward goals.
Do people in your life support you going to therapy? Are there people in your life you can share with about your experiences in therapy who can reinforce the work you are doing?
This can just be someone who asks “what did your therapist say about that” to help you bring back the perspective and guidance you received. Or this person might just be a great listener and someone who is safe to talk to in between sessions while you are working through your stuff. That kind of support helps your progress in therapy.
If your child is in therapy, if you are participating in sessions and help implement the skills your child is learning in daily life, that makes a HUGE difference.
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Whether you know a lot about empathy or not, this is worth the 3 minutes.
Brene Brown gets across such vital information in an accessible way with her humor and relatability.
This short cartoon is a great reminder or great way see how to build empathy into daily interactions.
Great for kid too!
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