How to get the most out of therapy
No matter who you choose as a therapist, there are steps you can take today and now that can help you get the most out of your therapy.
Here are simple steps to get clarity on your next focus in therapeutic space:
Identify 3 key areas where you would like to see improvement.
Narrow these 3 areas to 1 area which seems most important and urgent to be processed.
Look for a specific example when you encountered this 1 area as problematic.
Recall in as much detail as possible the following: how it made you feel, what were the words used, how did your mind/brain make sense of it in that very moment and what were the key takeaways for you, from that example. You can write these details down for ease of remembering later. New research shows that memory is not a constant, solidified place; but different variations of what we perceived as happened from our unique, personal point of view i.e. our perceived reality.
Once you can explore what happened in that moment/incident/example, your therapist and you can aim to tease out what inner learnings are activated. These learnings and adaptations often lay hidden when things are smooth-going, but get triggered or brought to conscious experience once we perceive danger, threat or abandonment. Once in focus, these learnings can be explored further and in the process updated to fit our new narrative of life.
The goal of therapy, especially experiential therapy as highlighted by Diana Fosha, founder of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) is to make the implicit-> explicit and the explicit -> experiential. Once you are able to experience the world of your inner, adaptive child, transformation can begin that lasts beyond our therapy sessions together.
In essence, we are profound, living, breathing, experiential beings. Our brain is locked away in a dark cage of our skull with no physical light penetrating it. The brain has to rely on our senses (neuroception, proprioception, physical sensations, gut responses, micro facial movements, etc) to make sense of the world around us. This is how we make meaning of life. We are constantly working towards making meanings of actions, thoughts, emotions, feelings. We are meaning making machines. And we construct our realities based on what meanings we make of our world. And these meanings make us understand the world as either a hostile, threatening place v/s a loving, accepting place where one is free to explore their true selves. That is, these meanings and learnings determine if we are living the life we want or the life others want us to lead. That is precisely what therapist can help with!