Preparing for Therapy

Preparing for therapy

So, you are ready for therapy but don't know what to expect. What's the difference between all the mental health professionals?

A psychologist has a PhD, they use a variety of therapies but do not prescribe medications. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who specializes in mental health, they use a variety of therapies and prescribe medication. They often run departments.

Therapists are usually clinical social workers with a master's degree and often have specialties.

You may need a marriage and family therapist for help with your partner and relationship.

More than likely if you are reading this you will need a therapist who practices evidence-based therapies to treat posttraumatic stress disorder and depression.

In therapy we need an empathetic hand to guide us through the process.

Empathy is the ability to identify, internalize and experience another's emotional state. It's imperative to find a therapist you can connect with.

The nature and structure of trauma leaves internal conflicts, resting in recessed parts of our minds.

The most important aspect of therapy will be an empathetic connection with your therapist. A therapeutic window to reach the deepest compartments within.

To access this information safely, we must feel safe and bond with our treatment provider.

To begin the journey of recovery we must find a therapeutic window into our minds substrate. Without developing a rapport with your therapist, therapy will not work.

Become an advocate for yourself, change doctors or therapists if you are not connecting, or they are not listening.

I've fired a therapist because she talked about her issues and was more depressed me.

I once fired a psychiatrist due to their unwillingness to discuss my medications or listen to what I had to say.

And, have changed therapists because he wasn't certified in Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT).

There are many kinds of therapy and the one you will probably engage in the most is psychotherapy or talk therapy.

Talk therapy consists of sharing about psychological distresses, social, life in general and family issues.

The therapist listens, gives feedback and psychoeducation on your condition along with teaching coping skills to manage symptoms.

Talk therapy focuses on maintaining equilibrium and balance in life. The most effective treatments are evidence-based therapies.

The front-line treatments are Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Exposure Therapy (ET).

There are other models and one especially helpful in the last three years is internal family systems, or IFS. Which we'll get into in another article.

Ask your mental health provider if they use these therapies and have certification.

We'll cover two, since they are the most used. CBT examines the relationships between thoughts, feelings and behavior.

By identifying beliefs that lead to self-destructive behaviors the therapist can offer coping strategies to help change thinking patterns over time.

The therapies will be problem-focused and goal-directed for symptom reduction. Expect to have homework and if you want to heal actively participate.

Cognitive Processing Therapy, an exposure therapy, focuses on accessing trauma memories, identifying and challenging faulty beliefs about the event and resulting over-generalized beliefs in self.

According to Cognitive Theory, trauma impacts our belief structures and how we categorize the world.

That two types of emotions follow trauma, natural and manufactured. Natural emotions are universal such as fear, anger, joy, happiness, sadness and loss.

They have a natural course to run unless we feed into them, then they can become stuck points. Resulting from the way we interpret events and not fact based.

I know a combat medic with four tours and many medals, the purple heart included. She was unable to return to active duty because of extensive damage received from an Improvised Explosive Device.

She's fighting the belief that she let soldiers down because she couldn't return to her Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and deploy outside the wire under fire where she belonged.

No one could tell her different, it was deeply ingrained in her perception of herself in the world.

Cognitive Processing Therapy starts with psychoeducation about your condition and symptoms, then therapy goals and identification of stuck points, and then 12 sessions centered around challenging beliefs and meaning of the event.

The structured sessions center around identifying thoughts, feelings and stuck points associated with the event.

They challenge problematic thinking and address safety, trust, power and control, esteem, intimacy and meaning.

This is an exposure therapy, a writing component starts with an impact statement and then writing about the trauma again from each perspective safety, trust, power and control, esteem, intimacy and meaning.

The therapist and patient will examine the writing together with worksheets and writing exercises. I've used this therapy and it's the best one so far.

Keep a therapy journal.

Write a list of questions and reminders to keep track of what to talk about. Write about your insights and revelations.

Write about your feelings, thoughts and trauma. In doing so you begin to take back your mental health one session at a time.

A journal will keep you from forgetting the issues you want to discuss and a place to share your inner self.

Trauma telling is an important aspect of healing, it enables us to re-contextualize our experiences and find meaning where we once thought was none.