What is therapy all about?
This image has been shared around on social media recently, as a way of explaining what the therapy process is like. A client comes in, shares their situations, their struggles, their emotions, and their lives. The clinician, then tries to answer key questions:
Why is it, that this person is presenting, at this time, with these concerns and experiences?
Furthermore, what are the experiences this person has had, that are shaping their belief system and the lens through which they see the world?
If we could add another image to create a sequence to the picture, it would be of the therapist, holding their thoughts of what the client has shared with them, out for the person to see.
Therapy should be a collaborative process. Part of the job of a psychologist to be able to feed this information back to a person, and have a collaborative discussion with them about it. Collaboration is key.
As clinicians, we are the so called “experts” in psychological theory and principles, but people are always the experts in knowing themselves. It takes the clinician and client to work together, to figure out what might be going on for a person, and the best way to move forward.