A counselling or therapy session last 50 min for individual therapy and 80 min for couples therapy.
What does a typical therapy session look like?
It always begins with the clarification of your aim for this session: which problem would you like to work on? Your issue should be one that YOU have an influence on. Unfortunately, I cannot help with wishes like “Please make sure that my husband loves me more / that my mother leaves me alone / that my employer doesn’t mob me”.
In addition, your treatment goal should be time-sensitive: What can/do I want to achieve in the first session? How many hours can/do I want to invest in this problem?
This process is always a “Project in Progress”, i.e. priorities can shift or other topics become more important. Nevertheless, it is important that you always know where you stand and where your “journey” should go to.
Interventions
Depending on the problem, we will use different interventions: :
- we can look into your family history and try to find reasons for the current problem there;
- we can analyze the problem situation in detail and work out a better option for your behavior;
- we can explore what is actually “behind” the problem you are having,
- we can concentrate more on the cognitive or the emotional side of the problem;
- we can try to recognize patterns in similar situations and resolve them,
- etc.
There are typical systemic techniques, e.g. constellations, ego states, etc., which I use. Basically, I use interventions depending on the problem area and also depending on the person, and some of them are also used by other therapeutic directions. In this sense, I tend to work eclectically and integratively: what helps the patient is used.
At the end of each session it is important for me to find out where you are standing: Can you go home with a good feeling and let what you have worked on take effect? Is there anything else that we need to clarify beforehand so that you can function well in your everyday life?
This is the aim: counselling and therapy should make your life easier.