PSYCHOTHERAPY IS FOR LIFE

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

“If you enter the training context, this is for life. I will not console you"

Vadim Demchog

I know that a lot of people come to therapy with the thoughts (conscious or not) “I’ll get a tool, an instruction, I’ll solve my problem, and I’ll continue to live as a happy person.” There is exactly half of the truth here. Dear client, I’ll give you a hoe, I’ll give you a shovel, I’ll give you gloves and everything you need for mental work. I will not give an instruction. The problem may or may not be resolved: it is influenced by several factors at once, which are worthy of a separate article. The last point is the most important, and it is also binary in nature. If the client did come to happiness (in his understanding) during therapy, then whether he can repeat it, whether he can keep it, save it, pull it out if desired, depends only on him.

The truth is that no psychologist will be effective without the personal choice and work of the client. And no type, direction, school of psychotherapy gives a guarantee, not that for a lifetime - for the first minute after its completion. Psychotherapy helps to organize the internal work space, to come to a state of balance, gives a set of tools that will be working for each specific client. Tools by which the balance can either be maintained or returned in crisis situations.

So, life is for life. Crises of various sizes will catch up with us anywhere, anytime. There is no universal antidote to them, because we are living, developing beings, and our crises, if you look at them from a deep perspective, are only signs of the need for our own growth. Teaching to cope with crises is one of the direct tasks of practical psychology. But the desire to do this cannot be awakened even within the therapy. If the client does not want to solve the problem, this is his right, therefore, his responsibility. The same rules apply to life outside of therapy. Either you make a decision to solve the problem, or you don't. And personal happiness will depend not on the number of tasks solved, but on their perception. Anything that ceases to negatively affect life is no longer a crisis, not a task, not a problem.

Coming from time to time, from task to task, to this understanding is personal psychological hygiene. Psychological hygiene has many nuances that can be learned either directly from psychotherapy or from information sources on the relevant topic. And a person either observes this hygiene, or surrounds himself with tasks-microbes, which thoughtlessly, limply and, what is most dangerous, multiply uncontrollably in his life, sweeping the person's personality under the rug. A person without constant self-reflection ceases to be the master of his life, he is controlled by his tasks. As you can imagine, here, as with any self-improvement and care and health - either for life, or to live in a cramped, unsuitable for existence, box.

What is very important, all this also applies to psychologists. And especially for them. Non-medical psychotherapy, so called, is very disciplined. You either learn to keep your mind, spirit and body clean, or you burn out rapidly and risk harming your customers. This is not an equality with the fact that a psychologist does not have and cannot have problems. How it happens, how it can be. And what other problems. But it is equal to the fact that an eco-friendly, healthy psychologist with these problems is not afraid to come into contact and work on them. Constantly, every day. If something is critically missed in one's own life, if something critically negatively affects the personality of the psychologist, this will inevitably affect the therapy, the quality of his work. I would venture to call it a law. So our mental hygiene is our direct responsibility.

For people not from the sphere, unfortunately, this is only the right.