Will Going To The Psychologist Help Me? The Secret For The Therapy To Work

What does the success or failure of a therapy depend on? Always works? Not always, although some studies have found that what determines that a therapy ends up working is not only the technique used by the consulted psychologist. Other associated factors are also determining factors that do not depend on the work carried out in the consultation, but on the patient.

First of all, if you go to therapy, its success will largely depend on your level of motivation. Aspects such as trust in the professional or the type of relationship established between the psychologist and the patient also affect the optimal development of therapy.

3 essential conditioning factors for the therapy to work

One of the factors that most influence the success or failure of a therapy is the motivation with which the person goes for help. It is essential that the individual is involved in their therapy and signs a commitment to themselves when starting psychological treatment.

• Commit yourself. No matter how good the psychologist is or how much experience he has, if you do not internalize the therapy, make it yours and make it a priority in your life, therapeutic work, by itself, will never be successful.
• Work thoroughly. The psychologist can help and advise from his particular psychotherapeutic orientation, but in no way will he have the prerogative of forcing your inner transformation nor will he be able to do the personal work that is required between sessions for you. It could be said that the psychologist acts as a catalyst, but the one who really has the power to modify your attitudes, your behavior and to heal yourself is you.

If you want to solve your problems, commit to yourself and work hard to achieve your recovery.

• Do it for you Motivation, in therapy, must come from you. You must be aware that you have a problem that you cannot solve by yourself and that you need external help to achieve it. It is useless for others (family, partner, etc.) to advise, accompany or even force you to go to therapy. If your motivation is not intrinsic and authentic, the therapeutic work will never work.

Being motivated facilitates healing

Already Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said that the person should participate in his own healing and that he could not treat those who had not decided to heal. In psychology, this idea is even more evident than in medicine. Neither the best therapy nor the best psychologist can help a patient if he or she is not fully involved in their therapy.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to clearly see the difference that motivation makes in therapy.

In the same week, two people, Javier and Susana, began their respective therapies. As they began to work so closely together, I was able to monitor their journeys in parallel and observe the effect that the unequal level of motivation with which they came to my office had on them.

Susana always went to her appointments on time and rarely canceled a session (just once, due to illness). In his notebook, he had reflections that had arisen as a result of the previous session and he maintained an attentive attitude during the week, always analyzing the relationship between his memories, his emotions and his current problems. She wanted to improve, she was determined, and she put all her effort into it.

From the beginning of his therapy, Javier’s attitude was quite different. He was often late for appointments and occasionally called at the last minute, citing any excuse to cancel his session. He did not do any work between sessions and had a hard time remembering what we had worked on the previous time.

It should be noted that Susana had decided on her own to seek therapy to solve her problems. It was not an easy decision and it took her a while to go online to find a psychologist, but, as she told me herself: “I have tried a thousand times to solve it myself, but I have realized that I need help from outside.”

Javier also claimed to be determined to do his therapy, but it had been his girlfriend who looked for my number and he had agreed to come to the consultation after several discussions with her and her family. As you can see, his motivation was not totally intrinsic.

The evolution of the two cases was very different. While Susana progressed session by session and was achieving all the objectives that were set, Javier barely made small progress. After several weeks without significant progress, I raised the need to reflect on her motivation and whether she really wanted to work to improve her problem.