5 Ways to Maximize your Therapy Session
Therapy can be transformative—but only if you make it work for you. Too often, clients fall into habits that stall progress: circling shallow topics, avoiding the hard stuff, or turning sessions into “recap reels”. If you’ve ever left therapy wondering, “What did I even get out of that?”, this article is for you.
Keep track of targetable material
Material is considered anything that makes up your life experience, including memories, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, perspectives, triggers, stressors, and events. Targetable means it is material that is negatively charged enough for us to work on. If it is not targetable, that means that although it may be relevant to you, it may not require the help of a therapist to work through. Many times in therapy, I have started sessions allowing clients to share updates—and once I start probing, I find out it was non-targetable stuff that they didn’t want therapeutic help for. Therapy is maximized when clients keep track of therapeutic material between sessions, like these examples below:
A disturbing memory
Somatic issues
Emotional discomfort
Repeated thoughts/Toxic thoughts
Painful interactions/Conflict
Negative beliefs/Negative self-talk
Basically, anything that is “charged” and “sticks”
Remember, by the time you have your scheduled appointment, things might not be as charged, and therefore you will be tempted to swim to the shallow end of the pool— but this isn’t helpful for long-term resolution. We need to “activate” the past experiences that you logged so we can get to the bottom of the issue.
Name your needs (using scripts)
Try not to assume that your therapist knows what you need or want. The therapy process can really blossom in amazing ways when you bring a clear need. Therapy isn’t a one-size-fits-all space and your voice is the key to tailoring the process to your goals. Plus, bringing a clearly defined need is the difference between a mediocre session and a meaningful one. Here are some example scripts of how to communicate needs during session:
“Can we talk about (fill in the blank) today?”
“Here is what I was thinking we could focus on today?”
“Can we do some EMDR?”
“I’d like to do work on this part of me today?”
“Here is the part of me that really needs attention today”
“I’ve been struggling with this negative belief this week. Can we explore it?”
“I need some skills for dealing with my mother/father.”
“I had a question about (fill in the blank) and wondered could we explore it together.”
“I was reading (name book) and the author said something really interesting about (name topic), can we talk through this?”
Try some of these out at your next session! You will love the results and feel empowered to get the most out of your therapy.
Go deeper than the recap reels
Many clients use therapy to simply talk about the week/month—in sort of a “storytelling” mode. While that is one way to approach healing, therapy is more than just giving a week-in-review. Think cycles, recurring themes, patterns, schemas, and underlying issues that are the thread weaving through all of your weekly updates. Is work so stressful because you don’t have the boundary tools you need or maybe you are regressing to a younger child state at work? Is the latest relationship conflict a warning signal about something unresolved from your past? Let’s get you past the recap reel and into the real work of transformation.
Sit with the ‘aha’ moments
When your therapist offers a question or insight, try not to speed over it (by changing the subject, compulsively disagreeing, getting defensive, or engaging in passive-listening). See therapeutic feedback as a type of “speed bump” on the talk therapy road. The questions we ask as therapists or the concepts we share are designed to help you reach your goals. If you speed over these, you might mess up your car (your heart, spirit and nervous system). Slow down and think about what is shared—not so that you can stroke the therapist’s ego or to rush into agreement, but so that you can more thoughtfully respond. Much of therapeutic growth can happen in the silence, the pauses or the slowing down. Practice active listening, where you reflect back on what you heard the therapist say. This type of lingering ensures you get the most out of therapy. Sit with more—speed through less!
5. Write it down & work it out
Therapists are clinically trained to document the work done in therapy, but documentation can certainly be a collaborative process—where clients track and record the process as well. Writing is scientifically proven to open up neural networks in the brain that help you to heal. I encourage clients to keep a designated notebook for therapy sessions. If you don’t prefer to write things down or don’t see the need, you have that choice to engage in the work in however it makes sense—maybe you have a remarkable memory and prefer to take neuro-notes (mental notes). Maybe you take what you hear and write it on the tablet of your heart (according to scripture). Whatever your preferred method—write down the process. Some tips on what to write:
a summary of what we talked about
coping tools and strategies provided
insights, new perspectives and alternative viewpoints
homework given or homework that you choose for yourself
I personally, do not consistently assign therapeutic homework, and when I do, I make sure clients know it is optional and not mandatory—BUT, that does not mean I don’t recognize the benefits of therapeutic homework. Most of the transformation happens outside of therapy—so the more engagement with homework, the more brain-change you can achieve. When you do homework, you are working out what you wrote out. Homework can look like:
Thinking about something
Writing down something or answering a therapeutic prompt (journaling)
Being with your inner child
Interacting differently with a partner/child/spouse/coworker
Reviewing or completing a handout
Checking out a website, book or other resource
Practicing a somatic or body-based exercise, breathing, grounding
Just noticing
These tips, when applied, will enrich your therapy experience and improve therapy outcomes. If you are unhappy with your progress, explore if it is because you never knew that you actually had a role in how therapy went for you.
Wishing you a life-changing therapy experience!
