At its core, the aim of therapy is to help you develop new skills that are consistent with your values, which when practised and developed reduce suffering.
To make therapy work, we try to maximise the factors research reveals are important for change. Four clear factors have been identified from over 50 years of research: the therapy relationship, a client’s expectancy and hopefulness change will occur, the type of therapy model used in treatment, and extra-therapeutic factors. Extra-therapeutic factors are those happenings outside of therapy, which have little direct link to therapy but may be associated with particular therapy goals and skills development.
Skills development begins with understanding the issues. This is the talking part of therapy, which often forms the bulk of what happens inside the consulting room. Talking helps you to understand concepts and new ways of thinking about your issues. It also helps us to understand you and your situation better. By the end of each therapy session, you should have some ideas and plans for developing new skills you can test out and practise in real life outside the therapy room.
Therapy discussions are vital to the change process, however concepts and suggestions can easily be forgotten. For many of the new concepts and ideas discussed, there will be a handout or worksheet you can take away with you to serve as a reminder of therapy content and any suggested practises. This will not always be the case and, for this reason, it can be helpful for clients to bring along a small notebook to jot down important ideas or use the notepaper and pens we provide.