Dr. Sean's Therapy Q&A
This week in Shift Therapy®
Hello friend,
I have something new for you. I selected a couple questions I was asked during my psychotherapy sessions this week and answered them through a Shift Therapy® lens. If it’s a popular format, I’ll keep it up.
And if you have any therapy-related questions, feel free to reply to any email you receive from me. I can’t respond to all emails, but we may include your question in a future ‘Therapy Q&A’ post to benefit our growing community.
If you or someone you care about is thinking about exploring psychotherapy, Rula is a good place to find a therapist who takes your insurance and allows you to pay out of pocket as well. In the meantime, Presence Shift with me anytime.
Stay present,
Sean
What’s the biggest hurdle to making psychotherapy work?
For most people, the biggest challenge is getting started. Getting over that hurdle entails saying to yourself, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do it,’ and then taking the steps required to schedule your first session — and then showing up for it. When people jump into it, they typically get huge value out of it. That fact implies that much of the value of psychotherapy comes from the act of setting aside an hour to create the time and space to work on yourself and your life each week. So, if you’re considering therapy, the biggest challenge may be setting a clear intention to care for yourself to enhance your life.
Another big part of the value of psychotherapy is that you get connected to a new relationship that becomes meaningful to you. Of course, if it's not working for you — i.e., if you’re not feeling connected to your therapist after a few sessions — then you should try a different therapist or treatment option. We humans are social creatures, so developing a new and meaningful relationship partly explains why psychotherapy tends to work well once you make the decision to begin, if you follow through. People often begin feeling more engaged in life, and life begins feeling more meaningful soon after beginning psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy tends to work especially well if you have some capacity for insight into yourself, and you’re willing to be open and vulnerable enough to develop that capacity further. When someone doesn't have a good capacity for insight, or really struggles with having any insight into what's going on with them and their relationships, then progress in therapy can be slower. However, a therapist is there to help with that, so anyone can make progress in therapy if they have some patience and commitment to it, (i.e., you keep showing up).
What intention should I have when beginning a psychotherapy session?
I believe our capacity (or incapacity) to maintain a present state of mind and body underlies all of our mental life experience, and therefore, all of our mental challenges and triumphs. Whether its anxiety, or stress, or depression, or interpersonal issues that you’re wanting to work on in psychotherapy (to name a few possibilities) the main challenge tends to be with being able to stay present — i.e., to live in the moment — during those unpleasant experiences.
So, ‘presence’ is the core skill I’m always working on in psychotherapy — just as we do here at The Presence Shift. Given that living in presence is the core skill that you're working toward in therapy, your intention to maintain a present state of mind and body during your sessions (and to maintain that intention outside your sessions too) is the ideal intention to maintain for your psychotherapy sessions — regardless of what you and your psychotherapist are discussing at any particular moment.
BIG DISCLAIMER: The Presence Shift® and Shift Therapy® provide wellness content only. It is not intended as medical advice, or as a replacement for professional mental health advice or services. We, and Dr. Sullivan, can’t ever respond to you with personalized psychology feedback or advice and we do not provide any mental health services here. We teach you how to shift into a better state of mind whenever you choose.