Biases about therapy

This therapist has a few, like

• Therapists should be trained to assess everything possible about the patient, especially whatever is contributing to problems, and

• They should have a plan to resolve those problems, considering the context— that’s what systems therapists do.

• And they have to know how to look up answers, find consultants, when they are stuck.

• After seeing a therapist a person should feel better.

• That feeling probably won’t last, that’s why people keep coming back for more.

• There are reasons hope doesn’t last, generally because nothing’s changed, initially, except the way you look at things.

• If you’re in therapy, at least one other person in your family probably should be.

• Much of what a therapist has to offer should have been taught to all of us in school, and ultimately will be. Professionals like Dr. Freedman are already eliminating the boundaries of time and space, doing therapy online.

• Individual therapy is wonderful and a luxury. Getting everyone else to go with the program and not sabotage what feels like a good plan is much harder. But if everyone contributes, the odds are more favorable.

• Woven into most psychological issues, the ones in our heads and relationships, is a veritable textile of genetics, family environment, and social learning. In good therapy you address all three.

• Good therapy mitigates pathology—with or without medication. To feel good, probably something big has to happen, to someone, and it isn’t always an Ah, ha moment, so much as a new response to an old situation.