I continue to dispel myths on the subject of “psychotherapy”, taking upon myself the burden of psychological education. I hope my articles will help someone and my work will not go unnoticed. Today I want to talk to you about “what happens in a psychotherapist’s office” ? Due to the fact that the author himself belongs to the Gestalt community, the conversation will rather focus on psychotherapy within the framework of the Gestalt approach. At the very beginning I will say: I don’t know which therapist will be good for you, I don’t know what you want and what you are ready for. There is a saying in Gestalt circles among experienced clients: “It doesn’t matter who your therapist is, it’s important how you treat him . It reflects very well the essence of psychotherapy. Now let's get it in order!
How to be a client at a psychologist's appointment?
You have at your disposal: a psychotherapist, you, the time of the therapeutic session (usually 50-60 minutes) and office space with at least two chairs. That's basically it. No shaman's tambourines, no chicken feet for Voodoo rituals, not even a crystal ball with candles will be provided to you.
We will look at options for how you can manage time. Usually, at the very beginning of therapy, the client says: “I have a problem and I would like to do something about it,” this is also called a “request . There is simply an idea that you need to contact a psychologist with a certain problem, and the psychologist himself will certainly inquire about the reason for your visit. "Rule?" - you will think. Not at all! It's just that you need to start the conversation somewhere.
With more "advanced clients" there may be a different situation where the client may say: "I don't know what I would like to work on, but I would like to talk."
This is a completely normal situation, because as a client you are not required to clearly understand the essence of the request. Your desire is enough to get the job done. More “advanced” clients (who have visited a psychotherapist more than once) may generally state that they have no desire to work or come to therapy, and they would like to work with this. In the end, you have every right not to want to work at all, but you just want to be with a normal person, and not just a psychotherapist, chat about life’s ups and downs, drink tea together. Sometimes you just want to see a person outside the context of psychotherapy and see his living human reactions and assessments of how different he will be from his role as a psychotherapist. At certain moments or days, you have the right to spend time on your own (separate from your psychologist), but remember that you still pay money for it. Use the office space in a way that is convenient for you, and you can sit down yourself so that it is convenient for you (distance, posture). Take care of yourself, it will be useful and will have a fruitful effect on the entire process of psychotherapy.
What to expect after your first visit to a psychologist
If a specialist has already been selected and verified, then you can think about the first visit. It is worth thinking about your expectations regarding this meeting, but even if it is difficult for you to name a specific problem on your own, and the only thing that worries you is the feeling that something in everyday life is wrong or annoying. This is enough to decide to seek support. Working with a specialist can be devoted precisely to finding the cause of the feeling of discomfort.
The first meeting with a specialist is usually preparation for further visits. You should not expect impressive results from it. This is the time when the psychologist can get to know the client, collect the necessary information, and propose a work plan. This is also the time to draw up a “contract”, that is, the principles of interaction between the client and the specialist. He usually determines how often and for how long meetings will take place. The frequency depends on what the client needs and the type of service they choose (counseling, crisis support, therapy).
It is also worth keeping in mind that such a “zero” meeting provides an opportunity to get to know a specialist and check how you feel around this person. During this meeting, the psychologist will likely only listen, sometimes asking questions. Some clients leave the first meeting feeling disappointed. You often hear: “Nothing special happened at this meeting because I kept talking.”
Areas of work of a psychologist
- Prolonged feelings of sadness, irritability, anger easily, and lack of skills to cope with it
- Problems in maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with loved ones
- Chronic stress, constant tension and anxiety
- Prolonged feelings of sadness leading to withdrawal from daily activities
- Periodic difficulty sleeping, nightmares, insomnia, etc.
- Support in a crisis situation: death or illness of a loved one, divorce, job loss, experience of violence or participation in an accident, etc.
- Working on memories of difficult situations, mutual grievances, etc.
- Problems related to hunger
- It is difficult to diagnose health problems (psychosomatic symptoms), for example, chronic or frequent headaches, digestive problems, as well as reduced resistance to infections, etc.
What does working with a psychotherapist involve?
I want to focus on the word “work”. Because there is work ahead, internal work on oneself, sometimes hard, sometimes exhausting, sometimes inspiring and revealing new horizons. Like any work, it is duly rewarded.
And the more you put into the work, and the more serious it was, the greater the results and rewards await you. You will have to invest your own: time (which you will spend on psychotherapy), money (payment to your psychologist) and most importantly, your own efforts.
And you will agree with me that it would be naive to believe that spending an hour of your time and about 30 dollars is enough to seriously change the quality of your life. The most unpleasant thing in this situation is that no one will do this work for you, not even your psychologist. But on your own (without the help of a psychotherapist), in order to achieve results similar to those of full-fledged psychotherapy, you will most likely spend more than one year of your life, and perhaps you will never get it. In this case, your psychologist is a guide who knows the shortest paths from point A to point B, and his task is not to walk this path for you, but to walk with you, insuring and providing support in difficult moments, and forcing you to speed up the pace, if you are too relaxed.
And how many times have I heard about what people are “ready for” in order to change their life and its quality, but at the same time they are not ready to devote one hour a week to working on themselves. But let's continue our conversation!
How to prepare for a consultation with a psychotherapist
The accuracy of diagnosis, and therefore the correctness of treatment in psychiatry, depends on trust between the doctor and the patient. No matter what price you pay for the appointment, it will not bear fruit until you open up to a specialist. Don't be afraid of a psychotherapist - this is a person you can completely trust. All personal information will remain only between you. Before a consultation at our clinic in Moscow, try to solve the following problems:
- make a list of your psychological problems;
- formulate what specifically worries you about each of them;
- tune in to confidential communication;
- Determine for yourself what specific help you are counting on.
How does a consultation with a psychotherapist work?
- The specialist establishes contact with the patient.
- The patient talks about his problems in detail.
- A comprehensive assessment of the patient’s condition is carried out using hardware, psychological, psychotherapeutic and other methods.
- A treatment concept is formulated - these could be psychotherapy sessions, medications, etc.
- The specialist draws up a plan for completing assignments.
What will be required from the client?
Now let's talk about you and how you will use yourself. What you do with yourself largely determines how the therapy process will go. Essentially, there are two trends: customers seek new experiences or avoid them in every possible way, maintaining the status quo.
In Gestalt there is only one “correct” way to use yourself - consciously. The main task, if it can be formulated this way, in Gestalt therapy is awareness, which in itself gives freedom, freedom of choice to live or act in accordance with your desires and needs, and not follow an unconscious series of events in your life.
At every moment of time you make a choice: to be aware or not to be aware of what is happening to you. Just remember that you make the choice anyway. And if you come to a Gestalt therapist, then the first thing you will learn is awareness (of your feelings, desires, actions, choices, relationships, addictions, unfinished situations and life scenarios, ways to build your life). How does it help to realize? Draws your attention to yourself. He asks: “How do you feel now? Who or what is this feeling related to? What would you like? Get it or get rid of it? Why do you need this? What will you get and what will you get rid of? How else can you achieve what you want? What do you choose? What are you doing? How do you like what you are doing or have done?”
Concerns before your first visit to a psychologist
Fears associated with a visit to a psychologist are completely normal. The fear of evaluation or criticism of decisions, behavior and thoughts that will be voiced during a meeting accompanies many people. Ultimately, however, it is often a great relief to be able to share a personal story with someone completely stranger.
The decision to visit a psychologist is often also accompanied by fear of a negative reaction from others. Despite the fact that an increasing proportion of the population is using personal development or psychological support services, many people still think of psychologists in outdated stereotypes.
Keeping in touch with a psychologist
To contact me you can use email, WhatsApp text (not calls, but messages), my phone number.
If you want to make an appointment, ask a question, or clarify something, you can do this in a way convenient for you by selecting it from the ones listed above.
If a response from my side does not arrive at the same minute, then I will definitely contact you later. I may be in a psychological session or busy.
At the end of your message, for convenience, you can indicate how and when it is most convenient to contact you.
FAQ
How to behave correctly with a psychologist? This is the question that many people ask when they want to seek help from the specified specialist.
There is no need to come up with any model of behavior for yourself. You should behave with a psychologist in the same way as in ordinary life with other people. If it is convenient to answer his questions while standing, then you need to do it that way, and not while sitting in a chair. A competent psychologist knows how to build a conversation. Using professional techniques, he will invite the person to relax and openly talk about an exciting problem. The client may need to undergo psychological tests. There is no need to be afraid of this.
In order to behave at ease during an appointment with a psychologist, you should prepare yourself mentally. You need to collect your thoughts, make a conversation plan in your head, you can even write it down on a piece of paper. Immediately before the appointment, repeat the sequence of your speech and simply go into the office. The psychologist will not say anything bad, much less do anything. This specialist, in the specifics of his profession, should help people, and not try to aggravate the problem that worries them. Therefore, you need to answer the latter’s questions as they really are. There is no need to lie or invent something unnecessary.
In addition
How should a psychologist behave so that the person who contacts her wants to come to her again? To begin with, the specialist must calmly listen to her client. She should not interrupt a person if he begins to tell her something.
The professionalism of a psychologist lies in the fact that he must competently bring his patient into a frank dialogue, even if the latter flatly refuses to tell him the whole truth about his life. At the same time, the specialist is obliged to do this as if his client independently began to tell him about his feelings.
There should be no rudeness in the speech of a psychologist. If the latter begins to talk to the client in a raised tone, then there is no point in continuing the conversation with him. In such a situation, it would be best to contact another specialist.
In what other situations is it necessary to consult a psychotherapist?
Depression : Depression is common throughout the world, with experts estimating that more than 300 million people suffer from it. Depression is different from normal, daily changes in a person's mood in response to changing life conditions. Depression can develop as a result of experiencing or living through any difficult, traumatic, unfavorable event for a given person: loss of a job, dismissal from work, bereavement, psychological trauma. Depression can become a serious health problem when it becomes moderate to severe. It is depression that can lead to suffering in a person’s life, deterioration of relationships in the family and at work. Sometimes, in a family circle, it may look like a person suddenly becomes lazy and does not want to fulfill his home and professional responsibilities.
There are situations in life when we understand that nothing can be changed. It is necessary to “accept” one’s life situation and move on, but a person cannot find the strength and resource. These are situations when we experience grief, loss, loss. In modern society, where it is customary to focus more and more on success and achievements, a person experiencing grief is left alone with his situation. It is in these situations that the psychotherapist becomes a support, support, mentor. Allows you to go through all stages of acceptance, grief and find the resource to live on.
The following situations that I will offer for consideration are when a person is afraid of certain situations, of being in certain places, in other words, is filled with obsessive thoughts that bring fear and anxiety. With a specialist psychotherapist, it is possible to find these thoughts, or find the cause of fears and anxiety, work through and understand. It is useless to fight these obsessive thoughts and fears “symptomatically”; it is necessary to find the root of the problem.
Not long ago, I worked on a project with families raising disabled children, children with cerebral palsy, as well as families in which one of the spouses is disabled for one reason or another: he cannot move and cannot take care of himself independently. In these families, I heard the following phrases: “I’m emotionally burnt out,” “I can’t support anyone else anymore,” “nothing makes me happy,” “I forgot what it’s like to laugh.” Helping to serve another, satisfying the needs, caring, supporting another, a person forgets about himself and his needs. In this case, you should not postpone meetings with a psychotherapist. At these meetings, you will be able to find new, adaptive patterns of behavior for yourself, find support for yourself, maintain your emotional state, and therefore remain in resource to help your loved one. No matter what situation you find yourself in, always remember that with a psychotherapist you can remain yourself and always be accepted for who you are.
Cost of consultation with a psychotherapist
Need to be frank
How to behave with a psychologist so that he can understand the real reason for what is happening to his client? So, you need to answer the specialist’s questions honestly and very frankly. Although this moment is not very pleasant, it is necessary to solve the entire problem, especially on the path of its study by a psychologist.
If a person, due to the presence of internal blocks, cannot be frank with a specialist, then he needs to honestly admit this to the latter. All your worries and anxieties need to be worked through together with a psychologist.
There are situations when the doctor himself will recommend that the client contact one of his colleagues.
