How Long Will It Take?
This is often one of the first questions in the mind of a prospective client when they meet a therapist for the first time. The therapist often gives an answer along the lines that each “case” is individual, but how often does this answer sound like a platitude?
This is often one of the first questions in the mind of a prospective client when they meet a therapist for the first time. The therapist often gives an answer along the lines that each “case” is individual, and it relies on the motivation and readiness of the client, and the quality of relationship that is created between them and the therapist. Often this answer sounds like a platitude.
Of course, usually a general guideline can be given from the therapist’s experience. The client may find this ‘average’ length of time encouraging or quite the opposite. The salient question here maybe is how long the client feels/hopes “it” will take, and what exactly “it” is –- what their sense of “it” is when they come — maybe the development of coping skills, maybe a complete recovery from depression involving a certain degree of fundamental change.
This is the moment in which I feel it necessary to make it clear, in my work, that this is a collaborative, teamwork kind of relationship. It is not the case that I am going to “do my stuff” on the client, which will take more or less six months, and it is not the case that it will take a set amount of time for the “drug” to start working.
I am lucky in my private practice to be able to offer open ended counselling, I have learnt, though, that stressing the open ended nature of counselling, while it gives a certain sense of security, may also give the impression that the client may become dependent, and the process will be interminable. It is also not always the case that clients have open ended resources to pay for counselling, and this is something that is worth being open about from the start.
Motivation and readiness are paramount, and so too is the support network available to the client, and their ability to marshal resources. The process of “therapy” is not something that happens in the sessions only. So a lot of factors do not depend on me as a therapist, but the way in which the client is received, so crucial to their motivation, does.
The attitude I would like to convey to my clients is that we will go, together, in the direction of whatever “it” is, and that we will get there as swiftly as possible.
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This article was last reviewed by on Friday, 1st February 2008. You can leave a response below.
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2nd February 2008
You can also tell them that you’ll do your best to do what they want this session. That they are free to then book another session when it suits them.
If they are asked to decide each time it can assist with not breeding dependance (though this may be important, it just needs very clear understandings I think).
2nd February 2008
Sure, I think this is a good approach, taking each session individually, it may help both counsellor and client to make the greatest investment in the session.
I think most clients do need and want an ongoing process though… and some may well interpret the ‘one session at a time’ approach as that they do not really have a problem, or the therapist doesn’t want to see them again!
Just another way of saying that every client is different.