The first thing I ever learned about therapy and group facilitation remains central to my therapy practice eighteen years later.
Invite people into the exploration which may evoke difficult experiences and emotions first. Then follow it up with an exploration which will access their strengths, values, aspirations or exceptions to the problems rule.
This sound and simple advice has served both myself and more importantly my individual and group therapy clients well throughout the years.
It is vital that our clients leave their therapy sessions feeling stronger and more resilient than when they walked in.
People who are coming for therapy are usually thoroughly engaged with thoughts of the problems they face, memories of difficulties, interpersonal disasters and the smallest of their personal imperfections.
Our job is to help people explore these difficulties in ways that shift perspective and open up new ways of seeing things. It is also our job to get people in touch with the parts of themselves which problems may have blocked from their awareness.
It is generally significantly more challenging for our clients to acknowledge and speak about their personal qualities and capabilities than it is for them to recount their faults and failures.
So don’t give up when your client tells you “I don’t know how I have managed to get out of bed this morning” or “this is too hard”.
Leave a little silence for them to fill with their answer, ask the question three times in different ways if they can’t respond the first time.
Hold resilient optimism for them that they have got solutions, abilities and competence and remember even if they can’t give you an answer in the session your question will have planted a seed.
Invite people into the exploration which may evoke difficult experiences and emotions first. Then follow it up with an exploration which will access their strengths, values, aspirations or exceptions to the problems rule.
This sound and simple advice has served both myself and more importantly my individual and group therapy clients well throughout the years.
It is vital that our clients leave their therapy sessions feeling stronger and more resilient than when they walked in.
People who are coming for therapy are usually thoroughly engaged with thoughts of the problems they face, memories of difficulties, interpersonal disasters and the smallest of their personal imperfections.
Our job is to help people explore these difficulties in ways that shift perspective and open up new ways of seeing things. It is also our job to get people in touch with the parts of themselves which problems may have blocked from their awareness.
It is generally significantly more challenging for our clients to acknowledge and speak about their personal qualities and capabilities than it is for them to recount their faults and failures.
So don’t give up when your client tells you “I don’t know how I have managed to get out of bed this morning” or “this is too hard”.
Leave a little silence for them to fill with their answer, ask the question three times in different ways if they can’t respond the first time.
Hold resilient optimism for them that they have got solutions, abilities and competence and remember even if they can’t give you an answer in the session your question will have planted a seed.
RSS Feed