The Bedrock of Good Therapy

Every few years, a new trend rockets across the therapy world. For the sake of being kind, I won’t name any here, but suffice to say, they usually focus on some new finding that some therapists rush to in droves because they naively think it might provide an answer to all their clients’ problems.

Seemingly overnight, articles appear on therapy sites, training sessions pop up, and therapists everywhere extol the benefits of these new groundbreaking techniques on their websites.

I’ve noticed something about these discoveries though.

If you wait a few months…they vanish.

Just like that, the excitement fades, the buzz is gone, and there’s not a lot left to add to the therapeutic toolbox.

What are the core elements in that toolbox?

Well, they’re rather simple actually. There’s things like:

~ Insight

~ Reflection

~ Empathy

~ Listening

~ Respect

~ Challenge

~ Wisdom

Notice how universal these elements are? Notice how none of them rely upon tricks, discoveries, or fads?

Yes, we should always be open to new things as therapists, but the simple truth is that we don’t do our industry any justice when we abandon our core principles in order to promote the newest get-well-quick approach.

I appreciate that this may be coming off as a rant, but I’m really getting tired of supporting new clients as they try to shake off the effects of the false hope and broken promises which they’ve encountered with previous ‘miracle’ approaches to therapy.

It’s sad, and it’s unnecessary.

As therapists, we need to be more discerning than this.

Simply put, we can’t provide easy fixes for people.

Why?

Because they don’t exist.

When we talk about mental health, we can’t reduce our work to a trick or a fad.

Instead, we need to be the patient, empathetic and open-minded supports that our clients need us to be.

And no matter how much we search, there are no shortcuts that you can take in getting there.