Therapy

I work in the mental health field as a Behavioral Health Technician (BHT). Full discloser, I am not a therapist and I am not a licensed counselor. However, I do eventually want to go back to go and start my own practice. Part of my role as a BHT includes assisting clients with understanding their treatment and helping them reach their treatment goals. Our ultimate goal is to see every client become successful, in their terms. In other words, one clients’ success could mean just the average day for another. If there is some improvement, even a little it can be a success story to share.

Many of my clients are in therapy and love it. However, some think it is causing more harm than good. So, what determines whether therapy is a good option or not?

Well for one (and probably the most obvious) we have to ask the client if they are interested in therapy or not. The client probably will not attend the sessions if they do not want to go to therapy in the first place. It is not my job to force anyone to go to therapy. However, I can strongly encourage clients to try and seek help from a professional.

The second factor in determining if the therapy is helpful is understanding what the therapist expertise includes. If someone is skilled in post-partum depression, someone who is not a mother is probably not going to find the therapy helpful. With that said, there are many topics that overlap. Such as depression and illness or anxiety and isolation. However, just because someone is skilled in treating depression does not mean that they are not capable of treating anxiety or other disorders. The type of therapy might be different and seeking a professional who is skilled in a certain area can be useful.

Another factor is understanding the relationship between the client and the therapist. Is it overall a good fit? If a client is unresponsive to a women’s authority, it would probably be unwise to send that client to a woman therapist. It probably would be unproductive and unhelpful in general. It might not be something that simple. Maybe the client does not respond well to the type of therapy the therapist provides. A lot of my clients respond well to CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and they do not respond well to EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) If a therapist primarily focuses on EMDR then maybe it is not a good match. However, sometimes that can only be known after a couple sessions. It should not take more than three sessions to know if the client has a good relationship with their therapist. There should be some improvement in that amount of time and if there is not, it is time to move on. There is NOTHING BAD about having a relationship not work. It would do more harm than good to try and pursue a relationship that is doomed to fail. The ultimate goal is to help the client and keeping that “relationship” going would be doing just the opposite.

I think that therapy can be extremely beneficial for clients. However, I also believe that forcing therapy can be harmful and that is not my job. My job is to understand what clients want and how I can assist them with getting their needs met. If they what they need is beyond my expertise I will ask them the simple question: “Have you thought about getting counseling and would that be something that you are interested in?” Without knowing those answers it is a helpless situation.

I also believe that everyone should have someone that they are able to talk to and be open and honest about things going on in their lives. Whether that be a professional or not, it is an important aspect.