How does psychotherapy help? This is a big question of course. Beginning psychotherapy and counselling is a significant and potentially life-changing decision to make.
However, if you are considering beginning therapy it can be helpful to look at some of the ways in which psychotherapy and counselling is known to have helped, and also some of the components of psychotherapy and counselling that are known to contribute to a successful outcome.
Ways in Which Psychotherapy and Counselling Are Known to Be Helpful
First, there are a number of typical ways in which psychotherapy is known to be helpful. Perhaps items in this list are similar to the kinds of help you feel you need?
Psychotherapy and counselling can help in a number of different ways and on a number of different levels. These include:
- Help for emotional difficulties including: depression, bereavement, eating problems, anxieties, self-harm, addictions, anxiety, abuse or trauma, relationship conflict or breakdown and migraine and chronic pain.
- Providing a safe space to talk about experiences and how they are affecting you. A space to work through distressing feelings and think about how they might have arisen. Psychotherapists are professionally trained in helping find the origin of problems, in exploring with you how you might want things to be different and then to help you to create change.
- Help to bring into awareness those ways of being which have become deeply set and lead to repeating patterns from the past. Such patterns may have caused you to get stuck in a lifestyle, in relationships or in behaviours which may not be what you want for yourself or your life.
- Help when you may not know precisely what the problem is, or perhaps you know the problem but you want to understand it more clearly.
- Help for when you feel stuck. Psychotherapy and counselling can help to identify the obstacles which are preventing you from changing and moving on. For many this can entail working through blame, shame and various self-sabotaging voices from the past. Learning to identify what is your responsibility and what is not is often a first step.
- Help for expressing – for sharing – important experiences. Talking about feelings and thoughts that you may not have been able to talk about before can bring a sense of relief. The security of having a space and time with your therapist each week may relieve the sense of being on your own and help to develop the capacity to create change in your life.
What Really Works in Therapy
Next is the issue of how psychotherapy helps. Research on effective therapy has found that there are four common factors in successful therapy. Consideration of these may also help your decision about seeking therapy:
- First of all, there is you. Your personal resources (hope, optimism, persistence, openness) and your social resources (friends, family, social support). These won’t necessarily all be in place at the beginning of the therapy. Perhaps none of them will be, but your therapist will support you in developing these resources so that the therapy can be effective for you.
- Next there is the relationship that you have with your therapist. This is called the alliance and really means the strength of rapport or agreement about the purpose of the therapy and how to achieve the goals of the therapy. Choosing the right therapist for you is important, and I have written a separate blog post about this.
- Next comes expectancy – a commitment or belief that therapy can help.
- Finally, there are the techniques and the models the therapist uses to help you. My blogpost on diversity in therapy may be useful to read about this.
Overall Benefits of Therapy
So, by taking into account both the ways in which psychotherapy is known to be helpful and how psychotherapy helps, a range of benefits can be experienced:
- Relief from emotional difficulties
- Identifying and working towards goals,
- Creating meanings
- Understanding lifestyle patterns and behaviours
- Changing relationships (with yourself and others)
Furthermore, it can do this with the greatest effect if you have the personal resources, the right therapist (for you) and the expectancy of success. To end this post, perhaps the words of Marianne Williamson express why people most often turn to psychotherapy and counselling:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
Psychotherapy can help with moving into the light. If you feel that it might be beneficial for you, I can be contacted by email or by phone on 07891 613580. We can then arrange an initial session or discuss any queries you might have.
REFERENCE
Hubble, M.A., Duncan, BL., and Miller, S.D. (eds.) Heart and Soul of Change: Delivering What Works in Therapy . American Psychological Association: Washington DC