Therapeutic Contract

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Personal (individual) therapy is regulated by a number of rules that you need to know about in advance, “on this shore”. The described terms and conditions are not a legal contract. It is a therapeutic contract that is necessary to create a therapeutic relationship and the success of therapy.

Time of therapy and methods

In psychological therapy, the therapist is the one who helps to understand oneself and learn to live without extraneous advice in each case. I don’t know which is best for you and we will find out in the process. I do not know in advance the correct answers and it helps to treat you without bias and prejudice. I do not lead or push you to a better place, but I go with you, sometimes half a step forward, sometimes behind, sometimes level.

The most important factor in therapy is time. It takes time for something to grow and mature, and simple intellectual understanding is not enough for therapy. Therapy is the process of re-evaluating and sharing past experiences in order to release the strength for a new life.

It takes 1.5-2 years or more for something to really change in your personality and in the usual ways of adaptation. This does not mean that you have to wait that long to improve the situation and to alleviate it. Some symptoms will go away, some will subside in a couple of months, but radical changes take more time.

Therapy framework

The so-called framework rules are needed for the reliability of the therapeutic space, mutual trust and a set of the necessary speed of psychological processes.

The meetings take place once or twice a week. The duration of one meeting is 60 minutes. If really necessary, it is possible to accept outside the plan by agreement.

It is advisable to choose your fixed day of the week and hour. The impossibility to come to the meeting must be notified at least 24 hours in advance. This rule is two-sided and it is about mutual respect.

Difficult periods of therapy are accompanied by an experience of the meaninglessness of everything, a feeling of hopelessness and despair, mistrust and doubts about the appropriateness of therapy. At this time, your decisions are determined by unconscious defenses and coincide with an increase in the number of external reasons for missing appointments. Circumstances that do not seem to relate to therapy (lack of money now, problems of other people in which you must definitely take part, bosses, transport, weather) for some reason arise exactly when we come to some is not yet clear what a meaningful topic. The only way to avoid avoiding therapy is to decide ahead of time that you are coming by appointment. If we have made an appointment, you come to it to tell how difficult it was to come today.

Sometimes meetings take place in the office, sometimes on Skype, sometimes we alternate between live and online meetings. It depends on the circumstances, for example, in case of illness, it is preferable to meet on Skype. The same if we live in different cities.

Safety conditions

There are no two therapists in the course of therapy - one smart, the other cheerful, man and woman, hypnotist and analyst, one in one city, the other in another … First, choose one and stay with him until the end of the therapy.

Confidentiality. The therapist does not share your personal information with your loved ones or anyone else, provided that you are not plotting crimes. In supervision, the therapist may discuss interactions with you in a group of colleagues in order to get feedback and thus be able to help you more professionally. At the same time, your personal data changes beyond recognition.

Confidentiality on your part lies in the fact that you do not discuss our work on forums, in social networks and do not disclose details in conversations with loved ones. This discussion is a reaction - a leaky bucket from which the feelings and thoughts intended for therapy flow. Moreover, advisors are not responsible for their advice and recommendations. Do not complain about your specialist to other specialists, discuss all difficulties in relationships, first of all, with your therapist. They are ALWAYS about something and are very important. If you see that you are REALLY harmed, the therapist behaves inappropriately, devalues you, skips appointments, or something similar, express your dissatisfaction, first of all to him.

If your loved ones are interested and anxious, you can introduce them to a therapist. He will tell them what therapy is, why it is, while maintaining confidentiality in personal matters.

Individual therapy can be combined with group therapy with the same therapist, or one therapist can work with you individually and the other leads a group with you. If you are working in this mode with two therapists, then they need to know about each other. If you are seeing a psychologist / psychotherapist and a psychiatrist at the same time, then these specialists should be in touch with each other.

Intensives, training programs, short-term trainings, drug treatment can be combined with and often promoted with personal therapy without any contradictions. You just need to inform the therapist about it.

How do we cooperate?

You don't have to prepare a theme, write down dreams, or customize. All I expect from you is a willingness to engage in dialogue, even if it is emotionally difficult. It is good when you are ready to study your inner world, analyze and discuss your reactions to internal and external events.

Sessions are unpredictable, tense, silent, filled with deep sadness, tears or joys of discovery and filled with love for all living things

The degree of emotional involvement, frankness, depth of conversation, a sense of trust and openness are the main indicators of an active therapeutic process and the fullness of the session. You yourself may feel that this meeting today was especially important, but that that gave almost nothing. Some sessions are forgotten without leaving a "dry residue" in the mind, or there is a sense of a dead end. This means that we stopped in front of another closed door or, as K. G. Jung, it's time to "build up silence for the word."

Outwardly, this is not always silence. Sometimes, on the contrary, there are many words behind which complex experiences and not expressed feelings are hidden. Including those addressed to the therapist. Sometimes these are “bad” feelings and wrong thoughts that you don't want to talk about, but you need to talk about. For example, anger at the aloofness or stupidity of the therapist, the desire to call him a bad word. It's not a fact that your therapist is really stupid, but you need to say about your experience. Your experiences at this moment are authentic.

A dead end or difficulty in therapy indicates hidden possibilities, the appearance of some kind of ghosts, a figure of silence, important information - something that needs to be discussed. To translate the unconscious into the conscious, you need to say whatever comes into your head, dream and fantasize out loud, turn on your imagination, expecting understanding to come later.

In therapy, they talk about the personal and, if possible, do not separate what we think from what we say. And so that not all fantasies and desires arising in therapy turn into erroneous actions, they must be spoken out. So you will learn about yourself previously unknown, get adequate feedback and we will refrain from mistakes.

Irrational aspects of therapy

Therapy deals with the unconscious part of the psyche and this can be alarming. Nevertheless, we encourage you to go beyond the usual framework of perception. By understanding the origins of anger, fear, and other feelings, you learn to build realistic relationships.

What does the deep unconscious level of the psyche mean? When a person does not understand the reasons for their strong feelings, therapists say they are unconscious. There are people who irritate you, anger, or vice versa, sympathy and disposition. Feelings for them arise by themselves and it is not clear why. Or you give superficial explanations for this while the reasons for these feelings are in the unconscious. Hence the feeling that I understand everything, but I can not do anything, nothing changes. This is the intervention of irrational factors. The goal of therapy is to recognize when your feelings about someone are not true and then teach you to understand the real causes of relationship difficulties.

We proceed from the premise that feelings, motives and desires are not the same as actions. In therapy, there are no concepts of morality, sin and the idea of punishment

In sessions, you get to know fantasies and hidden desires and it all goes to work. There are only inappropriate actions and unwanted actions. Decisions made on the basis of strong feelings, so-called, reaction, can indeed be premature or wrong. When you start therapy, you will see how some of the people close to you who have been and are helping you will feel that therapy is not helping you. They may be jealous of a therapist with whom you regularly meet and talk for hours. They are almost always jealous, implicitly or obviously to the point of quarreling. They have the right, but this is not the point. Such reactions from the outside mean that you are changing, your changes become noticeable and can cause discontent among loved ones. It is when you have advanced in something that someone close to you will tell you that you have become worse after visiting this "shrink". From the outside it looks like this - you start to express your opinion, declare your desires, more often refuse, etc. All this is an indicator that the work is going in the right way.

It is important that you do not succumb to discouragement. During the difficult periods of therapy, enlightenment is sure to come when it becomes obvious to you and your loved ones that there is an improvement. For example, you no longer call your mom in the morning and in the evening, but your relationship with her has reached a new level and you do not offend each other as before.

The only "but". If relatives begin to prevent you from selling an apartment and transferring money to the therapist's account or they don't like that you divorced, left them a child, and you yourself are touring the country for your star therapist, then most likely your loved ones are right - you are in not in therapy, but in some other bad process.

Payment for therapy

Therapy is never free. It’s not talking with the therapist, the thoughts that come to you, and the feelings that you experience in therapy that you pay. Good for a ruble, and bad for a nickel. You don't even pay for the results of therapy, because these are your results. You pay for the time. At the same time, you critically assess how effectively it is spent in therapy - "time is money."

We discuss the issue of payment on an individual basis, but the usual cost of a session is 1500 rubles

Sometimes the cost of a session can be reduced by agreement. So that we do not forget who is who in a therapeutic relationship and do not become too pleasant to each other, there is a rule to increase the cost of sessions. Not necessarily one and a half to two times, but increase it a little. Moreover, in the process of work, your financial intelligence should also grow.

If the therapist for some reason does not appear at the meeting on the appointed day and hour, then the next meeting is free of charge. It is his responsibility to be present at work with you. If you miss a meeting without giving a 24-hour notice, the missed session will be charged. This is your responsibility.

Completion of therapy

Therapy is an intense process. Not like running a marathon, but it still takes time to brake. You need to say about your desire to end the therapy 3-5 appointments before the end. Spontaneous, emotionally motivated decisions about completion are usually wrong. The processes open in therapy and the dialogues started there must end. Otherwise, you will be left alone with your experiences that would not have arisen outside of therapy and this can be a great burden. The final meeting is planned in advance and at it we summarize the results. In this sense, this meeting is special. If you are going to interrupt therapy for a while, then you will also need a final meeting to summarize the interim results.

Contacts outside of meetings

I do not comment on anything between meetings on your call or SMS. But if you find it necessary to write something important for you and send it by mail, I will read it and if it is urgent, I will definitely answer.

Recently, due to the active use of social networks, I do not add clients as friends. If you are an interesting person, and you are interested in me, we can communicate, but at the same time we will not be able to be in a therapeutic relationship.

Welcome to therapy

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