Goals of Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy aims for helping people with a broad variety of difficulties. Client and therapist would discuss the reasons that brought the client to therapy and his/her current needs and they agree on the goals of the therapeutic process in initial stage of therapy.
Clients typically articulate the following goals when queried:
- Improving the capacity to identify, label, and constructively express emotions to be able to respond effectively (rather than just react) in difficult situations.
- Improving psychological wellbeing and enhancing resilience.
- Developing efficient and helpful ways of handling daily stressors as well as emotional and interpersonal difficulties.
- Learning how to make sense of their background and their past experiences.
- Improving their understanding regarding how their past relates to their current cognitions, decisions, and problems and improving awareness of the reasons underlying current emotional and interpersonal problems.
- Learning to set healthy boundaries in relationships and increasing the ability to protect these boundaries in different areas (family, work, school, friendships etc.)
- Resolving past trauma and improving current functioning
- Working through maladaptive and unhelpful patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting to improve functionality.
- Engaging in self-discovery and getting to know oneself better
How long should I expect therapy to last?
Some psychotherapy clients believe that therapy will “fix” all problems in several sessions, almost in a magical way. This is one of the most popular myths surrounding psychotherapy. Research findings indicate that it takes time to obtain clinically significant improvement in therapy hence it is not realistic to expect progress in a couple of weeks
*See Lamber et al., 2001 for more information
What to expect from the first session?
The initial stage of therapy consists of starting to build the trust-based therapeutic relationship and gather background information. The first session (or sessions in some cases) is called an intake, which refers to clinician asking some questions, collecting information regarding the client (client’s background, past and current difficulties, family life, social life, academic and/or work life). In this initial stage, reasons that brought client to therapy, short term and long-term goals, needs, ad expectations are discussed. If, for some reason, clinician decides that the client would receive what he/she needs in another professional relationship, clinician would refer the client to another professional (such as another psychologist, psychiatrist, another medical doctor) and help the client get in contact with that person.
When we work with children/adolescents, the intake consists of sessions with not only the child/adolescent but also their parents. This way, clinician is able to get to know the child as well as the family and hear different perspective which enriches the intake process.
Ethical Rules and Code of Conduct
Therapy is much more than “talking to someone to relax and feel better.”
It is a professional relationship; it is based on evidence-based techniques and it has some rules.
- First of all, psychotherapy should be conducted by a competent professional who is typically a clinical psychotherapist or a psychiatrist. That clinician should have an adequate academic background and he/she should have obtained the necessary additional trainings and clinical supervision. A competent professional is the one who never stops learning, evolving, and growing. Make sure the person you are planning to approach has the necessary qualifications and level of experience and he/she is fully trained to be a psychotherapist.
- What the client shares in the therapy room stays in the therapy room. Clinicians are not allowed to share client’s story or words with third parties. Therapist could only share such information (typically for research or educational purposes) after obtaining consent from the client.
- Therapy is not something a therapist “does” to the client. Therapy requires collaboration since therapists do not heal or “fix” their clients. In fact, clients and therapists work in collaboration to achieve clients’ goals. That is why it is very important that clients want to be in therapy and do not attend sessions just because somebody else suggested it or asked for it.
- There is no one-size-fits-all advices or approaches in psychotherapy. Every person is unique, every story is valuable and there is no one model, approach or technique that would work well for everybody.
- Therapists do not accept family members, friends or other individuals close to them as clients. These types of multiple relationships would potentially create boundary related issues and decrease the effectiveness of the therapeutic process. In these types of situations, therapist would refer that person that he/she is close with to another professional.
- Psychologists do not prescribe medication. Only a psychiatrist is allowed to prescribe medication in our country.
