Therapy can seem shrouded in mystery, a process done behind closed doors with noone else to witness it apart from you and your therapist. Questioning whether it is effective is pretty common and it can be difficult to gauge whether it is ‘working’ and what to use as a measure of success.
Knowing what to look out for when determining the effectiveness of your therapy sessions can help you reflect for yourself whether therapy is going in the right direction for you. Here are some things to consider throughout your therapy process:
Your relationship with your therapist
One of the most important factors in the effectiveness of therapy is the quality of the relationship you have with your therapist. While it can take a few sessions to settle into the rhythms of therapy, it is often a good sign if you find that there is a steady building of trust and comfort between you and your therapist over time. By about the second or third session, there should be the beginnings of positive rapport; you feel relaxed, safe, and comfortable in their presence to talk freely. And while the content of your chosen topic may be difficult to talk about, feeling like you can discuss things at your own pace and are able to start and stop as needed, and even feeling accepted and ‘allowed’ to have difficult moments as part of the process is all a sign of a positive therapeutic relationship.
Another aspect to the therapeutic relationship is the amount of collaboration in the dynamic. Being able to work together alongside your therapist in deciding the goal of therapy is important. This includes discussing what progress will actually look like. This also applies to situations where you may still be finding yourself feeling ‘stuck’ or that you are not getting what you want out of therapy. Having a therapist who is curious and responsive when you bring up impasses in therapy is crucial to the effectiveness of therapy. By bringing this up, you and your therapist may be able to find different ways to approach things and improve the effectiveness of each session together. It may even be a case of acknowledging that things may not be a good fit so that you can start looking at other therapists with different approaches that will be more aligned for you. When you are comfortable and able to speak up in therapy, it will lead to a more attuned and effective process.
Improvements in mood and wellbeing
While some issues can take time to process, there are tools that you can get through therapy which can be helpful in creating more immediate shifts in mood and wellbeing. For example, if an issue is causing insomnia, you may be able to explore with your therapist different ways to create a better sleep routine or experiment with various relaxation exercises that can help with your ability to sleep. Other times, it may be about finding alternative thinking styles or patterns that can open the door to conceptualising the original issue differently. These tools are effective in helping you create short to medium term changes so that you may be in a better place to tackle longer stemming dynamics or issues.
We have all experienced how getting some food in us or having a good night’s sleep can make all the difference to our energy levels and ability to navigate through the various challenges in a day. In the same way, you may be able to equip yourself with different ‘tools’ to add to your toolkit, enabling you to be in a more energised and/or clear headspace to face problems.
Greater choice and spaciousness in thinking
When we experience difficulties in life, it can feel as though life is pressed up against up against us or that the problems are ‘in our face’, leaving very little breathing room or perspective. We can therefore struggle to juggle what is normally required of us (going to work, looking after children, taking care of our own daily needs) on top of trying to understand and resolve the issues at hand. In this way, it can feel as if we are always playing catch up or simply putting out fires which gets exhausting and discouraging in the long term.
Engaging in therapy gives us an opportunity to assign a specified amount of time to really focus on exploring the issue without distraction. That window of time that you set aside for therapy is an opportunity to prioritise figuring out the issue and temporarily put all the other urgent or necessary demands in life to the side. In therapy, we are realistically shifting our attention to ourselves and whatever issue we want to explore in a contained way. After that, we may feel even more able to return to the daily grind knowing that there is always the next session to continue figuring things out which relieves the pressure and feeling of needing to scramble to manage everything all at once.
Movement towards your goals
Strangely enough, a sign of effective therapy may be a bit of discomfort. While you want to feel safe and relaxed to open up in sessions, progress in therapy also means you are challenging yourself and reaching your growing edge. It is normal not to always feel ‘good’ when we are learning to master new ways of doing things and the same is true in therapy. Practicing new ways of thinking, or stumbling over unfamiliar ways of communicating or relating to others will inevitably bring discomfort. Facing uncomfortable emotions which you may have avoided for a long time will also naturally be uncomfortable and somewhat distressing. Success in therapy is about how much closer you are to living a life that is (for the most part) aligned with your values as well as how you overcome difficult emotions and situations.
Therapy can be seen as the container in which to learn the tools that will allow you to observe and hold space for unpleasant emotions as you navigate challenges and make the most fitting choices for yourself. Movement towards being able to make (sometimes difficult) decisions in order to go towards more of what feels authentic to you is one way to measure progress in therapy.