How to facilitate therapeutic progress when going to the psychologist?

Going to the psychologist can be a truly revealing situation. In your consultation we can discover more fully who we are, learning more about ourselves and discovering ways to be happier and better people.

Many people go to the therapist with the clear idea of ​​feeling good, however, after the first session, the confusion, certain Frustration and even disappointment can appear since there are very high expectations about how our lives will improve to short term.

The truth is that psychotherapy is a healing and improvement process that, although effective, takes time. It is not something automatic: we are going to need several sessions, and in them our attitude and predisposition to change are going to be key. Next we will discover how to facilitate therapeutic progress when going to the psychologist.

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How to facilitate therapeutic progress when you go to the psychologist

Going to the psychologist is a beneficial process, but it takes a long time. Its positive effects take their time to manifest themselves and, for them to be noticed, it is necessary to go to psychotherapy several times for months (or even years) so that the small improvements that occur after each session accumulate and give a great effect elderly. Good things are made to wait and changing the way we feel, think and interact with our environment does not happen automatically and immediately.

Progress over the course of psychotherapy is not something psychologists magically smuggle into the minds of their patients. What happens is that, through a good therapeutic alliance, the psychologist tries to improve the patient's life by recommending behavior patterns and, in turn, the patient takes an active role in his own improvement. If you go to the psychotherapist with the clear mentality of wanting to improve and change, being collaborative, it will be a matter of time before progress is made.

It has been known for quite some time that psychotherapy is a useful tool, with wide scientific evidence supporting its effectiveness in treating a wide variety of problems psychological. Whether it is teaching the patient how to manage a symptom or helping him to overcome an entire disorder, psychotherapy is, without a doubt, one of the the most solid and powerful therapeutic processes to provide people with well-being, even when they themselves believe that they will never be happy.

However, the effectiveness of psychotherapy depends a lot on the patient. Your predisposition to improve and the attitude you show both in the sessions and in the tasks that are recommended to be done at home are factors that facilitate psychotherapeutic progress.. It is the small attitudes and changes in the way of behaving and seeing things that make a person progress when receiving psychotherapy.

Next we will see some keys that will show us how to facilitate progress and improvement when going to psychotherapy.

1. Commit to the regularity of the sessions

One of the most important aspects when it comes to facilitating change for the better as a patient is, without a doubt, attending the sessions. These sessions are thought by the psychologist very carefully. An attempt is made to choose the most appropriate moment to do them, avoiding that they are too far apart in time so that the patient forgets what he did. in the previous session but, also, avoiding that they are too close together, since it would not give time for the improvements of the previous session to be appreciated.

As patients we must respect these times. One day it may go wrong for us to go to the psychologist and ask him to change the date, but what we cannot do is constantly delay it. We must be constant. Let's look at it this way: if we sign up for the gym to get in shape, what good is it for us to go once every two months? It is clear that there will be no changes. Well, exactly the same thing happens with psychotherapy.

2. track progress

On many occasions it happens that, when trying to see if we are progressing, It is difficult for us to appreciate absolutely everything that has happened. The human being does not have an unlimited memory and, if in addition to this we add the effect of the negativity bias, it is most likely that the bad things that have happened to us We see the past more easily than all the good things that have happened to us, something that can harm our progress or even make us think about abandoning the therapy.

For this reason it is ideal to write down the progress we have made after each session, making our "patient diary". It is not something that we have to teach the psychologist, unless we want it to be. It is simply a record in which we record what we have done in each session, what we have talked about, what improvement the psychologist we are seeing has told us...

It is also useful to write down our thoughts, ideas and feelings related to the problem to be treated. Thus, by having them written down we will remember better for the next session and we can share some useful information with the psychologist to assess which is the best therapeutic option or if we can already speak of complete improvement.

3. Maintain healthy lifestyle habits

Starting a psychological therapy can be truly disruptive, despite the fact that its objective is to improve our lives. It happens to many people that, shortly after starting, they feel confused, tense and with a scrambled mind. This makes them make very impulsive decisions, including taking bad habits such as overeating, stopping sports, biting their nails...

We must understand that psychotherapy does not contribute to making us less healthy, quite the contrary. Many people who go to the psychologist begin to adopt good life habits such as practicing more sports, eating a healthier diet, quitting smoking… they feel motivated to live life and do it longer.

However, beginnings cost. Since mind and body are closely related, having bad lifestyle habits can hinder psychotherapy. If we maintain a healthy lifestyle, sleeping 8 hours a day, practicing sports 2 to 3 times a week and eating a healthy diet our way of seeing the world will be positive and constructive, something that will undoubtedly benefit the therapeutic process.

4. Identify how we deal with discomfort

If we go to the psychologist it is to improve as people and feel good. He or she will give us guidelines to deal with our discomfort, which will be useful and effective. However, for its effect to be as great as possible, we must limit those dysfunctional strategies. that we apply in our day to day, those that, without even knowing that we do them, worsen our lives.

Let's look at how to treat very intense discomfort. Many times, the habits we take to deal with this discomfort feed it or are even part of the problem. If we detect them and discuss them with the professional, he will provide us with alternatives that can counteract them in order to speed up and enhance the therapeutic progress of going to the psychologist.

An example of dysfunctional ways of managing stress is binge eating. Many people, being nervous, eat large amounts of food, especially junk food. These foods are very harmful not only for our body but also for our state of mind, making us feel more moody and sad.

5. Detect situations that prevent us from moving forward

Therapeutic improvement not only occurs in consultation with the psychologist, but in any important context for the patient. The therapeutic process is linked to the real and daily situations that we have to face. every day, which is why it is essential to detect those contexts that prevent us from moving forward, which are obstacles to achieving well-being and happiness. We must look at the situations, places and people that make us feel worse or hinder therapy.

We have a clear example of this with people who go to therapy to detoxify. It is very likely that his friends are using the exact same drugs that the patient is trying to quit. back, with which, continuing to see them can increase your desire to relapse, destroying all the therapy. Although drastic, the best decision that can be made to facilitate progress in this situation is to stop dating addicts.

6. Be honest with the therapist

It is true that one of the most widespread beliefs about psychologists is that we are capable of reading minds. A confession: it's a lie. Psychologists cannot tell what a person is thinking just by looking into their eyes. It is one thing to interpret the microgestures, capable of evoking emotions, and another thing is all the complex thoughts, experiences and feelings that are hidden behind those eyes.

For this reason, if as patients we want to see therapeutic progress when going to the psychologist, we must be honest with him. Make no mistake, we are not saying that absolutely everything should be said, including all kinds of intimacies. No, The idea of ​​being honest is to talk about the problem that bothers us, without lying and saying what we believe is necessary for the psychologist to know.

If we consider that there are things that the psychologist should know but we are afraid that they will tell other people, we should not worry. Psychologists have an ethical code that prevents us from sharing secrets with third parties, as long as the information revealed by the patient does not imply a danger to him or to others. For example, for a patient to tell us that he likes to watch pornography is something very different than for him to reveal that he constantly abuses minors.

And what things do not need to do to progress?

There are several myths that run around what patients should do as soon as they enter a psychologist's office. Today, many think that doing certain actions will guarantee therapeutic progress. Although it is not that they necessarily hinder it, it can be said that they are not necessary. There are many beliefs in popular culture about what the patient should do that are harmful because they make psychotherapy look like something very different from what it really is. Let's see a few.

1. You don't have to tell everything

Although it is true that psychologists ask many questions and for the therapeutic process to take place it is It is necessary for the patient to side with her and be sincere, he does not have to talk about absolutely everything. It is difficult for all people to open up to a person as soon as they meet them and it is normal for the patient to feel uncomfortable during the first sessions. It is not necessary to answer all the questions that are asked at the beginning. The psychologist will work with the useful information that the patient has given him.

• You may be interested in: "10 tips for choosing a good psychologist"

2. No need to talk about childhood

A well-established belief in society is that the first thing to do as soon as you start therapy is to talk about childhood.. This is really contraindicated, since for many people talking about their childhood is not comfortable and starting psychotherapy with something As emotionally intense as childhood is, it can mean that the patient only shows up for the first session and never wants to return. further.

For this reason, most psychologists prefer to talk about the present, about the situation of current discomfort for which the patient has come for consultation. If he or she wants to talk about childhood of their own free will, they can do so, as long as it is related to the reason for the consultation and it is deemed necessary for the psychologist to know about it. It is true that this can help the patient to understand himself, but it is not an essential condition to facilitate therapeutic progress.

3. The psychologist is not an absolute authority

A myth in many patients is that you have to listen to the psychologist in everything. The psychologist does not stop being a person and does not possess the absolute truth. Psychotherapy works as follows: the person comes to the consultation with a problem that they cannot solve on their own. The psychologist, as a professional, tries to help her by making her see a new vision of that problem., starting from the professional knowledge that the therapist has acquired by doing his training in psychology.

However, that psychotherapy is like this does not mean that the patient cannot question what the psychologist tells him. The psychologist does not force nor can he expect the patient to obey without question, but rather recommends what he should do. He, too, cannot decide to stop helping the patient for “disobeying him”. The psychologist is an expert in psychology, but the patient is an expert in his life. Although it is advisable to follow the professional's advice, not doing so does not imply that the therapeutic process is ruined.

4. You have to do all the tasks that you send home

Closely related to the previous point, the patient is still the one who decides whether or not to pay attention to what the psychologist has said. As we said, it is preferable to follow the psychologist's recommendations, since it is most likely that doing so will enhance therapeutic progress. However, they should not be seen as tasks that must be done yes or yes, like when we went to high school and they sent us homework.

Many patients do not take this into account and, when they do not do these "homework", they stop going to therapy because they fear that the psychologist will get angry. with them for not having done their homework. Psychologists suggest tasks, tasks that in principle will help the patient, but they cannot force them nor will they get angry because they have not done them. They are optional tasks and there is nothing wrong with not doing them. The worst that can happen if you don't do them is not moving forward, nothing more.

It should be said that if a patient does not do the tasks, perhaps the problem is not that the patient is little collaborator, but rather the tasks that have been entrusted to him are not done under the most appropriate. The fact that the patient does not do his homework should motivate the psychologist to change the way he treats the problem, choosing tasks that are simpler and more easily applicable for his client.

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