Therapy is a wonderful way to explore your inner world, process your feelings, and inspire transformation. But what clients can sometimes find is that a day or so after their session, they begin to feel a little lost, stressed or get back into old patterns and habits.
It’s important to support the progress you’ve made with your therapist in between your sessions. Here is what we advise clients to do in between our sessions:
Keep Your A-ha Moments in Mind
Therapy is a space for profound A-ha moments. It’s important to hold onto those in the days after your session. Think more deeply about what was uncovered and see if any other pieces of information come to the surface. Bring a notebook to your session and jot down things that you have been discussing. Between sessions use this journal to add observations and reflections on what has been helpful or effective and places you’ve gotten stuck. Bring this with you to your next session so you can share your additional insights with your therapist.
Learn
Ask your therapist to recommend some helpful books, blogs, podcasts or articles that may offer deeper insights into your issue. While reading about your issue will not resolve it on its own, it’s a great way to supplement your therapy sessions. There are so many resources available in many different formats that can help encourage and inspire you to further your growth.
Implement
While therapy sessions on their own can provide insight and equip you with new skills and strategies, without implementing these things it is very difficult for growth and transformation to take place. As therapists we understand that the change process can be challenging and if you are having struggles to implement what we’ve discussed in session don’t hesitate to let us know. We can explore what the barriers to implementation have been and help find alternate ideas or strategies that you may be more likely to implement.
If you did just these three things, you would find your time in between sessions would be more fruitful and help to facilitate further positive change.