OK, I Am About To Start Therapy, Now What? Two Important Behaviours To Learn

You have decided to go into therapy, researched and chosen a Psychotherapist who you can work with.  Excellent, you are off to a good start. Now you are about to go into your first session and wonder what you should be doing. You are not alone; this is a common thought. There are two behaviours that I believe will help you get the most from your therapy: pausing to check in and journaling. Let me describe the first one here, and I will write about journaling in another article.

Check In

If you haven’t been to therapy before, you might wonder both what on earth you are meant to do and why. I suggest to clients that I guide them through a check in at the beginning of each session. This allows you space to become quieter, slow down and focus on yourself. After all, that is why you are in therapy. I use a four part check in. These are four tools that will help you get deeper into your unconscious and help you on your journey. There is no right and wrong. The trick is to notice and be ‘curious’ about what is happening.

Physical

The first aspect is your physical body. You might like to close your eyes (or not) and scan yourself from head to toes or toes to head. Notice any points of tightness or fluttering or discomfort. How is your neck, your stomach, your feet? Maybe as you scan you realise that some parts feel empty. Are there any images or thoughts or memories that float up as you do this? All of these are things for you to discuss. Getting used to creating space to watch your body, is a useful skill. Often, we rush through life and ignore our body.

Thinking

The next aspect is thinking. By this I mean over the last week, or now, what have you been thinking about? Has something got under your skin, and you are ruminating on it? Are your thoughts on different topics? Is your thinking logical and orderly and one at a time, or are your thoughts random and scattered and all over the place? If something has hooked you, and you find it hard to stop ruminating, then this is often a good discussion point for therapy. It is possible it leads to something deeper in the unconscious.

Emotions

The next aspect is emotion. Do you feel happy, sad, peaceful, angry, furious, or frightened? You get the drift. You might be able to link your emotion to what is happening in your life, so it makes sense. For example, you feel happy because you have just started swimming lessons. Or you are frightened because your boss has just told you that you are presenting to 500 people at a conference in a week.

Behaviour

The final aspect is behaviour. Over the last week, what have you noticed about your behaviours? Are you doing what you normally do, or have you started doing something new or stopped doing something that you have always done? Often, we drift into changes of behaviour, and we don’t realise something has changed. Our significant others are often the ones that point out to us that we are doing something different. Or if we are very lucky, they ask: ‘why are you doing that?’. Noticing our behaviours can be a rich source of unconscious material for discussion in therapy.

One simple but powerful behaviour to learn. A  useful practice for therapy and of course anytime during your day. In my next article I will write about journaling, why and how to go about it.