A bedrock of substance use disorder and mental health treatment is individual therapy. At Elevare, clients enrolled in any of our programs receive individual therapy as part of a therapeutic package that includes group and family therapy as well as holistic therapies.
If you’ve never participated in individual therapy before coming to Elevare, you may feel nervous or intimidated at the prospect of sitting alone with a professional therapist and being “forced” to reveal your deepest secrets. But the reality is that individual therapy is designed for you. Our therapists may ask questions that encourage you to share, but the session is driven by your needs and your comfort level.
As with any treatment, individual therapy works best when you’re fully on board and willing to participate. To that end, we offer a list of things you can to do to prepare for your sessions and get the most out of your conversations with your therapist.
1. Come with an agenda. When you start to work with a therapist, you’ll have completed intake questionnaires or interviews that give the therapist an idea of what you’re looking for help with. But even though your therapist may be very skilled at leading you through the questions and conversations that address your concern, you have a role to play, too.
Ahead of time, have an idea of what you want to address in a particular session. For example, maybe something came up during the week that you want to explore, or maybe a prior therapy session triggered a feeling or thought that you want to talk about. A general rule of thumb: if you’re thinking about something more than three times a day, it’s probably worth talking about in therapy.
2. Bring content from group sessions into individual sessions. Most of your time in treatment will be spent in group therapy, learning from and sharing with your peers and other counselors. After each session, take a few notes about what you found thought-provoking or what you have questions about. Take your notes to your individual therapy session and share them with your therapist.
3. Arrange for a session that includes family members or other people in your support system, when appropriate. Your individual therapist understands that you do not function alone–that many of your concerns and needs involve other people. Depending on the situation, your therapist may suggest or be open to including another person in your therapy session. You can use the session to communicate to your loved one what’s going on in your recovery, what you’re learning, how you want to behave in the relationship going forward, and what you need from them.
4. Think in terms of past, present, and future. When coming into a session, identify the presenting problem and provide information. If it is an event from the past, consider how it impacted you then, how it continues to impact you, and your concerns about how it will affect your future.
If it is a current event, think about whether it has any origins in or connections to past events. If you’re worried about a future event, think about that anxiety affects you now and how similar events in the past have turned out.
Try to end each session with a future-focused goal. This will help you track your progress and notice any barriers you encounter in reaching your goal.
5. Take care of yourself after each session. Therapy sessions can be draining, especially if you are working through trauma. Be prepared to give yourself time and space to deal with the emotional, mental, and even physical exhaustion you may feel after a session. This may mean allowing yourself extra time for sleep, healthy meals, and time in nature (or whatever soothes you).
Consider taking notes between sessions that track how you’re feeling as you process the prior session’s work.
6. Allow your therapist time to prepare. Remember that your therapist does not know everything there is to know about every therapy style or personality theory. If you hear about a new modality or read an interesting article that you think could relate to your situation, give your therapist time to do their own research and have an informed conversation with you. Therapy is a learning and growing process for both parties, so allowing your therapist to get more informed can help build rapport and allow for more trust in the relationship.
7. Ask for recommendations for other treatment modalities. Every therapist has their own specialty, whether its grief and loss, trauma, CBT, DBT, etc. If you’re working with a therapist who focuses primarily on CBT, but are curious about whether another style of therapy may complement the work you’re doing, ask. For example, maybe you’ve heard great things about EMDR, and would like to give it a try. It’s likely that your therapist can recommend an EMDR specialist.
8. Be honest. Contrary to popular myth, therapists are not mind-readers. Many therapists might seem like they know what you’re thinking, simply because they’re observant and insightful professionals. But they need your complete honesty before they can know how to best help you. It can be scary to reveal the parts of ourselves that feel shameful or deviant or hopeless, but that’s where the heart of therapy lies. Being vulnerable about what you have done, thought, or felt is the key to healing.
9. Remember that therapy is hard work. Therapy is not a one-session-solves-all kind of deal. Be patient with yourself and with your therapist. Go to your appointments. Do your “homework.” Be as honest as you can be, and trust that the process is working. You might not see obvious results for some time, and you will always have some days that are worse than others, but the work that you do WILL help. Change comes with time.
10. Be open-minded. Therapists have a plethora of tools they have learned about and skills they have practiced throughout their careers. Try something new and be open to change. Your therapist has so much to offer that can empower you to help yourself recover.
