Why isn't my therapy working

If you’re the client, here’s a thought:

You might be too attached to your story. The one you keep rehearsing in your head. So attached that you refuse to engage in the interventions your therapist is suggesting, or you half-ass through them to justify your ineffective behaviors.

I’m not sorry if that offends you. If you were my client and you were manipulating our sessions this way, I’d be making you feel lousy about it right before I handed you a piece of candy to spike your blood sugar. Then we’d start over and do it right.

There’s also the option, if you were honestly participating and doing your best to cooperate, that you chose a practitioner whose methods aren’t fitting your specific mentality. For therapy to work, it needs to emerge from the relationship and rapport you have with your therapist, and then that rapport should flow naturally into the interventions they choose. Those might simply be wrong for your type.

If you’re the therapist, I have some harsh words, so hold your seat.

If your therapy with a client isn’t working, it is entirely your fault. I know, it contradicts what I just said to the hypothetical client, and there you are scratching your head to resolve the contradiction. There’s nothing to resolve.

In your session, you are responsible for the client’s results.

If they aren’t cooperative, it means you haven’t established rapport, you haven’t chosen the correct methodology to engage with them, and you haven’t modified your own behavior to influence theirs.

Clients view us as the experts.

They think they need to come in, vent and dump every detail of the story in their head, and then we say some magical words and everything turns to green pasture and sun bathing. We know it’s not possible. They never think so, even if they claim they know therapy takes time. Tell them directly and they’ll leave and go to someone who might give them the magic pill.

Here is what you do instead of wasting time on verbal masturbation: provide evidence. Design your immediate interventions to prove to them, beyond any doubt, that they’re already changing or about to change. That’s strategic therapy 101. You are responsible for creating a subjective experience they can rely on to change their behaviors and therefore their emotional reactions.

How you do it? That’s a whole training program, and I don’t have the time or credentials to teach you here. Look at my bio for references and dig deeper into your own methodology to figure it out.

xx, so...

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