2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
If you came to a doctor in the Middle Ages, you would be advised to use leeches for bloodletting, and that would be the end of it. Also, it is likely that if you came to a psychotherapist in 1920, you would only be offered classical psychoanalysis and that would be all.
But if you come to a psychotherapist today, you can learn about the many options for conducting a psychotherapy session, sometimes very different from each other. There are many options for how your psychotherapy will proceed. And some modalities are very different from each other. Some are better suited for some problems, while others require something different. But how do you decide which is best for you? How to make the right choice? First, you need to understand what you are going to a psychotherapist with and what you want to change. Here is information on some of the main types of psychotherapy that are in widespread use today:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: The main idea of this paradigm is that all our problems are due to what and how we think. It's great for treating anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. The emphasis is on conscious thoughts, not on what is in the unconscious. This is, as a rule, short-term therapy (several months or maybe a little more, up to six months). These therapists often give homework to better master new ways of thinking and behaving.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy: It was originally developed to help reduce suicide and prevent auto-aggressive behavior and for people with borderline personality disorder. Also, this therapy helps to cope well with depression, anxiety and other behavioral problems (impulsive behavior, incontinence in feelings, inability to control oneself and one's behavior). Therapists often use telephone coaching to support and accompany the patient in difficult situations between therapy sessions. Therapy usually lasts from six months to one year (sometimes longer), patients often combine both individual and group sessions.
Interpersonal psychotherapy: a model of shortened therapy originally developed for the treatment of depression. It is based on the idea that depression can be caused by problems between people and that solving these problems can help solve personal problems. Treatment usually lasts from one to one and a half years. Now this therapy is used to treat anxiety disorders, eating disorders.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy: Also called psychoanalytic psychotherapy, it is based on the idea that thoughts and feelings that are outside the field of vision of our consciousness cause problems (panic attacks, anxiety, mood swings, psychosomatic disorders, and others). The psychoanalyst asks the patient to speak as freely as possible and not control thoughts, one can talk about dreams and all fantasies. This allows you to better get to know and understand unconscious thoughts, feelings, drives. Better acquaintance with his feelings, which the patient experiences for the psychoanalyst, makes it possible to understand what feelings there are for other people and objects from the past. Psychodynamic psychotherapy usually lasts more than a year or two, but sometimes it is deliberately limited in time.
Psychoanalysis: this is an intensive format of psychodynamic psychotherapy (therapy sessions take place three to five times a week, and therapy lasts more than one year). While in psychodynamic therapy the patient usually sits, in psychoanalysis the patient is asked to lie on a couch. Knowing yourself by understanding your unconscious, gaining new experience in interactions with a psychoanalyst can improve the patient's quality of life and help overcome problems.
Combination therapy: A combination of psychotherapy and drug therapy is often used. It is used when the therapist sees the meaning in medicines and has the right to prescribe them or can turn to colleagues doctors to prescribe the necessary drugs and control the condition.
There are other types of psychotherapy, but this should be enough to start understanding practical psychology. There are short-term types of psychological assistance - from several days to several weeks, others are long-term (several months, years, some with an open end date). Some therapies work with the symptom and those problems that are on the surface, while others try to look deeper, encourage patients to talk freely and about everything, plunging into their unconscious, which makes it accessible for understanding and awareness.
If you feel that you need psychotherapy, ask around those people you trust about the specialists who helped them, sign up for a consultation with the chosen therapist - this will give you the opportunity to get to know him better, tell about yourself, see and feel how he works … This will make it possible to understand whether you will be comfortable working with him. You can meet with several therapists and find out which one is best for you. And to understand this, you can ask some questions:
- What kind of psychotherapy do you recommend for me and why?
- What goal can we set in therapy?
- How long can my therapy last?
- How do we know that psychotherapy helps? When, approximately, will this happen? What will we do if there is no progress for a long time?
- Do I need medications other than psychotherapy? If so, do you appoint them yourself, or does someone else do it?
Remember that the same type of therapy is not suitable for different people, each has its own characteristics. Ask questions, get more information, and then you will understand what is best for you.
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