How to therapy effectively: Tips and tricks after nearly a decade in therapy

Here's some advice from our experience over the last 9ish years of being in therapy.

1. Work hard

Therapy is hard work and what you put in is what you get out of it.

This is tightly correlated with a lot of the later points, but one general mindset you should have is that you need to work hard at this stuff in order to get something out of it.

2. Come prepared: know what you want and need

Therapy is at it's most useful when you come prepared with what you want to work through.

This comes at both the session and therapist level.

Preparing for a new therapist involves steps of

1. Finding out what you need help with right now
2. Finding the words to describe what those needs are
3. Finding what kind of therapy is suitable for those needs
4. Finding a therapist who you click with who can provide that kind of therapy

Preparing for a session involves steps of

1. Considering what problems you're facing right now
2. Considering what you need out of session this week: is that maintainance/upkeep or to dive into something?

These questions can be hard to answer if you aren't in tune with what your problems/emotions/struggles are, so between sessions you must...

3. Be mindful

Mindfulness is this word that gets thrown around a lot in therapy, so I don't really like it.

But it is a very useful concept.

Just think of it as spending time to be in tune with your mind and what thoughts/emotions you're experiencing.

That's being mindful.

So my advice is: schedule time in to be mindful every week outside of therapy.

This has a few benefits

1. It's just good for you. Mindfulness is good for your body and brain
2. It gives you time to think about what to bring to next session
3. It ensures you aren't just stuck in routine/grindset the entire week, and forces you to slow down and consider your current circumstances

Being mindful during therapy is fairly easy, you're sitting there talking with a professional who's job it is to listen to you and prompt you to dive into your problems.

However you get one hour of therapy a week (usually anyway), wheras you get 14 waking hours a day with your own brain.

It's much more efficient if you can practice being mindful and thinking through as much as you can outside of therapy sessions.

Then you can come prepared and show up to therapy with a bunch of stuff you've been mulling over in the past week.

4. Take notes

Then when you leave session with a bunch of new information on yourself/your circumstances, you have to make sure you don't forget it.

So take notes!

Write blurbs on your notes app. Scribble things on post-it notes. Record voice memos.

Do something to make sure you don't just walk out of a therapy session with nothing and forget it all on the drive home.

My advice is to sit down before and after each session and write down:

• What do you want to discuss this session?
• What did you end up talking about?

If you force yourself to do this every session, you'll always come prepared and you'll always have notes to look back on to recall past lessons.

5. Expect tools, not diagnoses

Therapy is not about diagnosing you with mental illnesses.

Well...sometimes it is, like telling a struggling adult that they have ADHD or autism (or more often, both), but moreso it's about getting tools and skills for taking care of yourself.

Modern evidence-based therapy practices (CBT, DBT, ACT) are all skills based therapies.

They all revolve around teaching the client how to practice some simple skills, following a simple couple steps

1. Teach the skill
2. Practice the skill in therapy
3. Practice the skill outside of therapy
4. Practice some more
5. Be able to practice it when you've forgotten everything and have to remember on the spot while being extremely distressed

See the common word there? Practice.

This is part of working hard, to be able to integrate these skills is to put in the time to practice using them.

To know that you need them, to write them down, and to put in the practice in using it, to finally be able to use it when you feel dysregulated.

Finally, there's a mindset you need to take into therapy to be successful at it.

6. Be vulnerable and trusting. Painfully so

If you want to get anything out of therapy, you need to be willing to offer something up.

To offer up a piece of yourself, to trust that you won't be hurt by this mental health professional.

You have to be willing to be vulnerable, painfully vulnerable.

There's a common saying in therapy which goes along the lines of: You can't help a client more than they're willing to help themselves.

This is very very true.

You can't help someone more than they're willing to help themselves.

The world's best therapist can't help you if you're not willing to open up to them, trust them, and be vulnerable with them.

You have to do it.

It's hard, I know.

And yes, you might get hurt. If they're a bad therapist, it might be for naught.

But you have to do it.

No heroes, no saviors

In one of my earlier blog posts we wrote about our experiences in therapy, one of the conclusions we came to in that post was that therapists are not heroes, and not saviors.

Therapists are not heroes, not saviors.

Ultimately, the picture I want to paint for you in this post is that a lot of the therapy outcomes ride on you and your mindset.

You and your motivation and your effort and your mindset will determine how effective therapy is for you.

Other factors matter, sure, but a lot of it comes down to you.

Therapists are not heroes, not saviors.

If you're struggling, like we have for so long, they aren't going to be the ones to save you.

The one who will save you is yourself.

Therapists are just there to help guide you along and give advice.

No heroes, no saviors, you have to save yourself

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