The Story of therapy
We make meaning throughout the stages of therapy.
A large component of healing is giving meaning to our experiences. Therapy helps us to take our often fragmented, chaotic, understanding of our life and organize thoughts and feelings in a coherent, linear, way.
Stories have a beginning, middle, and end as does therapy. The beginning phase of therapy is the information gathering stage. Together, we try to understand the presenting problems: what is affecting you, and how and what life experiences contribute to your current challenges.
The middle stage is where we do the hard work. This can often be tedious and difficult because we are actively working on identifying and implementing ways for you to improve your life. This requires effort and commitment to the process. When I work with clients, sessions are often framed as the behavioral and “action” planning, or the cognitive restructuring work, or both. When thinking about behavioral shifts, what sort of actions need to take place in your life for there to be a real pivotal change? For example, if you feel socially isolated, what actions need to take place for you to connect with others? What are the types of thoughts and feelings that are getting in the way of moving forward? Naming those unhelpful thoughts and actively challenging them, and shifting them, is cognitive restructuring. As we progressively work on addressing these challenges, we see positive, progressive, change and life improves.
When we’ve met our goals and the client is ready, we discuss finishing up together. Therapists often refer to the ending phase as “termination.” Having worked with children and families, “graduation” takes place when the child and family have achieved their goals. Ending therapy can be difficult for both the therapist and client when there is a strong mutual connection. Many clients felt emotionally safe enough to enter deep, dark, places they previously did not go with others. Therapy can feel like an integral part of someone’s weekly life. For some, ending therapy needs to be a process. Others are ready. On occasion, external factors such as moving, job change, money issues, or therapeutic fit, dictate the end of therapy.
That said, when we frame therapy like a story, a process with a beginning, middle, and end, we want a happy ending, a “good goodbye” to the therapeutic experience. That no matter the circumstances, ideally, someone will walk away with the feeling that the experience was a good one, and they received what they needed.