What Really Happens In Therapy? Analysis Of The 6 Phases Of The Process
There are very different approaches to psychotherapy, each pursues somewhat different principles and procedures. Anyway, There are phases that are repeated and can be recognized in almost all therapeutic processes and they help you identify how much your therapy is progressing or where you may be stuck.
Not all therapists plan each of these phases in a protocol manner, but working for a while on certain topics in therapy should always direct these stages.
Phase I: First contact
Initially, every therapist will need some information about the reasons for the consultation, the biggest challenges of their client(s), how they handled their situation up to this point and what they expect from the therapy.
For many people this first moment – which is more descriptive – has at the same time an effect of relief and organization of ideas That is to say, even though perhaps nothing new is being introduced to the situation yet, many people already take some relief from this moment due to the feeling of sharing and no longer feeling alone with what is happening to them.
Phase II: Assessment, validation and empathy
Beyond the therapeutic approach that is applied, the success of therapy is largely linked to the relationship of trust and connection that is built between therapist and client. For this reason, the first therapy sessions, along with the collection of information, focus on building a relationship of trust. As a consultant then it is particularly important during the first sessions that you pay close attention to how you feel with your therapist. Do you feel like you can share information easily? Do you feel like your therapist really understood what you are saying and what you are looking for?
It is important that, as a consultant, you feel valued in your being, regardless of what has led you to receive therapy As a consultant you must feel that your situation is a human situation and that what you feel makes sense given the circumstances. This phase, like the previous one, then carries its healing component.
Reconnects the person with their self-worth, facilitates understanding and self-compassion. Along the way come the first moments of understanding and awareness of your situation, which can feel uncomfortable. Something that they usually don’t tell you about therapy is that there can be moments of crisis and uncomfortable feelings due to what you discover about yourself during the process. That’s important, since crisis promotes change.
Phase III: Awareness
As you learn more about yourself and your situation, ideas and beliefs you had before are also questioned. By knowing more and reflecting differently on your situation, many aspects are deconstructed and once they are deconstructed you cannot see things again as you saw them before.
In the case of family therapy, the members learn more about the dynamics and implicit rules of their family system and how these affect each member of the family. It is a moment where new realities are discovered and that can be very encouraging, on the one hand, but on many occasions it also scares and generates crises.
This process of realizing is also called “insight”. It is an important process but also painful because it comes with the feeling that the floor is being taken away from under your feet Your way of seeing and understanding things up to this point has given you stability and recognizing that many aspects can also be seen in another way generates uncertainty.
Phase IV: Acceptance
The moment of acceptance involves different aspects. On the one hand, the acceptance that you are facing a difficult situation but also the assimilation of the new truths and what you take away from the therapeutic process. More important and sometimes even painful, is to recognize one’s own responsibility for current events and what lies ahead.
In this sense, it is also about accepting oneself and one’s own mistakes. It is a phase where you assimilate that rejection of yourself and denial of your own responsibility only generate stagnation and in order to continue you must accept what is and what you are, because only on this can you work Acceptance of the situation also involves acceptance of the other people involved and their way of being and acting different from yours.
Obviously, therapy seeks to cause a change in you and your life. To direct this process of change, some approaches work with more concrete and directive techniques while others apply more indirect and transversal tools. Here it depends a lot on what the consultant is also looking for and what he needs at the time.
Phase V: Cause changes
Changes arise through active questioning of current tools, for example, by disproving limiting beliefs or conflicting communication dynamics. The therapist often takes a more active role here. It is no longer just about listening and understanding but about making concrete points, suggesting certain activities or tasks, specifying alternatives and making commitments. It is also the moment where it depends on the client how much they are going to apply and take what they learned from the therapy to their daily life
Phase VI: Anchor changes that become a new status quo
This can be a follow-up or continuation phase of the process where as a consultant you share how you are applying the new learning in your current life, describe challenges and doubts that arise and reaffirm your goals. It is important to give yourself this time to continue and feedback the therapeutic process so as not to quickly relapse into past patterns.
In this phase the therapist reminds you of a lot of what has already been discussed, suddenly points out if you are falling back into old patterns or discarding activities that have not worked. It is a process of rehearsing and for that it is good to have someone on your side who advises, provides feedback and works as an ally or motivator
It is a process of deconstructing and reconstructing
The phases I have listed here do not necessarily always occur in this “step by step” order. Each therapeutic session can have moments of different phases, more than anything the first two phases occur almost at the same time. In some cases, moments of insight already occur in the first session. However, the principles of deconstructing and reconstructing are characteristic of any therapeutic process, which always implies moments of personal questioning and crisis for the client.
To start therapy, I suggest being attentive to the trust that the therapist inspires in you, but also trust in the process, in your own resources as well as a lot of open-mindedness and curiosity to learn something new about yourself.
Therapy is not about correcting mistakes, but about accepting that the tools that were applied until the beginning of the process had their meaning and were what you did with the best intentions and knowledge you had. Therapy would be the next step, to find new ideas and understandings about your situation that in the best of cases leads to overcoming challenging moments and personal growth. You do not do therapy once in your life to heal and then continue, each conclusion of a therapeutic process leads to a new status quo that, over time, may expire and another review is required.
