Typically, most people see their therapist once a week for 50 minutes. Most psychotherapy tends to focus on problem solving and is goal-oriented. That means at the onset of treatment, you and your therapist decide upon which specific changes you would like to make in your life. These goals will often be broken down into smaller attainable objectives and put into a formal treatment plan. Most psychotherapists today work on and focus on helping you to achieve those goals. This is done simply through talking and discussing techniques that the therapist can suggest that may help you better navigate those difficult areas within your life. Often psychotherapy will help teach people about their disorder, too, and suggest additional coping mechanisms that the person may find more effective.
Most psychotherapy today is short-term and lasts less than a year.
Psychotherapy is most successful when the individual enters therapy on their own and has a strong desire to change. If you don’t want to change, change will be slow in coming. Change means altering those aspects of your life that aren’t working for you any longer, or are contributing to your problems or ongoing issues. It is also best to keep an open mind while in psychotherapy, and be willing to try out new things that ordinarily you may not do. Psychotherapy is often about challenging one’s existing set of beliefs and often, one’s very self. It is most successful when a person is able and willing to try to do this in a safe and supportive environment.
Psychotherapy, also known as a form of talking therapy provides an opportunity for deeply personal issues to be spoken about with a trained professional who is not personally associated with the individual/couple seeking help. This therapeutic situation allows previously unknown areas of the self to be explored, thereby releasing new potential and allowing stored up emotional tension to be released. Through the use of language, through putting words and meaning to unexpressed feelings, transformation of psychological experience can take place. Through the establishment of a trust-based relationship with a therapist, the well rooted and established foundations of inner feelings can be explored, and new unknown emotional links can be made to the past. In this way the therapist and client work together to transform old experience into new patterns of feeling, thinking and living.
Common symptoms of emotional difficulties that do not resolve spontaneously:
Poor self-image and low self esteem linked with feelings of depression.
Intense feelings of agitation and anxiety, with a physical component (panic attack).
Difficulty getting ahead in the work setting - fear of underachievement.
A persistent feeling of emptiness inside; unhappiness and worthlessness.
Experiencing difficulty in forming or maintaining romantic relationships.
Unresolved confusion about sexual identity.
A recurrent pattern of dissatisfaction in sexual relationships.
Unpredictable mood swings, linked with shameful feelings.
Disturbed eating pattern or cycle.
Behaviour Therapy
Behaviour therapy is focused on helping an individual understand how changing their behaviour can lead to changes in how they are feeling. The goal of behaviour therapy is usually focused on increasing the person’s engagement in positive or socially reinforcing activities. Behaviour therapy is a structured approach that carefully measures what the person is doing and then seeks to increase chances for positive experience.