The Importance Of The Bond In Psychotherapy: How Can It Be Worked On?
Human ties have a notable influence on people’s mental health. Harmony in relationships between people favors the development of cognitive structures that allow us to better regulate stress, as well as deal with situations of high emotional tension Lack of harmony will cause discomfort, precariousness and alteration in the development of the relationship. A good patient/client – therapist relationship is essential in psychotherapy.
In psychotherapy, this relational experience is called the therapeutic bond and it contains some factors that I will describe later. At this point, the most important thing is to emphasize that the study of non-specific or common factors to any psychotherapeutic orientation considers the client/patient – therapist bond as one (if not the most) of the factors responsible for change in psychotherapy.
In fact, the phenomenon of the therapeutic relationship must be understood as the central axis of the entire therapeutic process. We can find this evidence in the research of (Safran & Muran, 2000 or Krause, 2005). Such is the responsibility of developing this bond that, its absence or neglect, is leaving the result of the therapeutic process to chance
Keys to an adequate therapeutic bond: guide for patients and professionals
We have been basing psychotherapy on its practice for around 30 years based on results and solid evidence, with scientific rigor of its therapeutic success. The contribution of the relationship to this fact is fundamental. If psychotherapists agree on something, it is that this therapeutic relationship is the cornerstone of all psychotherapy.
That this client/patient-therapist relationship is the guiding thread of the entire therapeutic process is due, first of all, to the fact that the bond develops in a permissive, non-critical, non-punitive, understanding context A lived space in which the problems that, for someone like you, can decide to seek help in applied psychology are raised and manifested experientially.
A first key in the right direction for the interests of our patients, and for the client to become aware of the inevitable commitment to themselves, has to do with persuasion. Yes, persuasion, or basis of therapeutic relationships in applied psychotherapies.
Persuading consists of the patient achieving objectives in the direction of what is important or improves their life and reduces psychological conflicts. To do this, the therapist is responsible for promoting adequate therapeutic adherence or the degree to which a person’s behavior favors the elements for the changes that favor them to be carried out: taking medication, performing tasks between sessions, or the actions necessary to motivate the client.
A patient who, in turn, must work on his competence, that is, be able to do what he has to do. Commit to this endeavor Persuade yourself based on your own commitment to the relationship of trust with the psychotherapist and the psychotherapeutic ritual or procedure, and the agreements established between the two.
Another of the keys, or several keys, is that of the factors common to all psychotherapeutic intervention, taking into account, as we have been relating up to this point, that the therapeutic bond, the patient/client-therapist relationship, is the most common of all. common factors. I already pointed out above, the trauma, the warp of the therapeutic relationship, must know how to develop the following three factors throughout the process: therapeutic alliance, real relationship and transference.
The therapeutic alliance, within the framework of the therapeutic relationship, is the exchange and explicit establishment of objectives by the patient and the therapist as well as mutual consent on what is intended to be achieved with the psychotherapeutic intervention, as well as reaching an operational agreement on the necessary actions and tasks, and the responsibility for carrying them out, to achieve those objectives that improve the client’s life.
Despite what I just told you, the therapeutic alliance is more than a work relationship; in order for it to be effective in addressing the client’s needs for change and improvement, it requires that positive personal ties be encompassed. That is, there is a rapport of aspects such as empathy, mutual trust and unconditional acceptance (respect for the person and their ideas even if they are not shared).
With the next factor, that of real relationships, it happens that we doubt whether to place it before or after the therapeutic alliance, although personally I prefer to place it before because the therapeutic alliance is a fact that not only facilitates improvement, but precedes it as a process. healer Real relationships respond to the establishment of behaviors of openness and honesty with which one participates in this relationship
Patients often give more importance to a more personalized relationship, even more so than that established in the therapeutic alliance. A relationship, if you prefer, less technical and subject to commitments. We must attend to the needs for authenticity, understanding and compassion because they will also provide benefits for psychotherapy and, consequently, for the goals of our patients.
Finally, transference, understood as a more general than Freudian phenomenon, means that it occurs in any psychotherapy, from psychoanalysis to radical behaviorism, because transference is something that occurs in any human relationship that has a certain intensity and relevance; It has happened to almost everyone, to a greater or lesser extent, that relationships from the past influence their present. In fact, many of the people who go to see a psychologist express, precisely, problems with their past and with the relationships they had in it
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