Psychotherapy: Let me introduce you to the basics!
So! Therapy is and can be a lot of things. Support, crisis management, healing, changing our behaviour, ideas, beliefs, narrative and self-image, achieving greater self-awareness, evolving, actualizing our potential, becoming more resilient.
What is not discussed or mentioned enough, however, is the basics of therapy in the very first session/s. Why do people seek therapy and what we as therapists provide in the very beginning.
When a person comes to a therapy session for the first time, certain conditions and “parameters” are present. From the part of the client: a significant degree of discomfort (whether greater or milder), sometimes a full-blown crisis, combined with the experience that whatever worked, helped, solved, comforted before is not working. So, we have a person in need of help.
From the therapist’s side, we have a trained individual that is willing and wants to help. But in the very first session/s the basic principles, from the therapist, is an individual who cares enough, is interested enough and is truly willing to be present! To provide a relatively safe environment (since it is the beginning and safety is not yet established) and bare witness of whatever the client wants to say or share at first. In a nutshell to “say”: “I am here, I see you and I am listening”.
So simple, yet at the same time so important. It is the first acknowledgement and validation, that whatever is happening to the client, is true. That the reality of the client is true. With no judgement, with no preconceptions on the part of the therapist (as much as it is humanly possible), no agenda to change or offer immediate advice. Just a place where the client is seen, heard and supported to talk. Or sometimes to not talk a lot. To have a very specific goal or need, or not so specific.
Because, when we are suffering, when we are in discomfort, when our reality seems bleak and relief not really possible, the first thing we need, as human beings, is someone to say: I hear you and I am willing to be present with you, sit “next to you” and say yes, your experience it true. You are having difficulties, you are in pain. Maybe even, that at this moment you feel despair, or frustration, disappointment or sadness.
As a therapist, I care and I am interested and I am willing to bare witness to all of the above. To connect with you in this very first level. And we take it from there. Before the deeper connection is made and the relationship is formed and the trust is built. Before, the therapist’s office becomes the safe space.
That is what happens in the beginning.
This article is written by Christina Karampoula,
Psychologist, Systemic Psychotherapist & Family Therapist.
Learn more about her work👉 Here!