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Importance of a therapeutic relationship
Essays on therapeutic relationship
Essays on therapeutic relationship
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I felt damaged, alone, and as frustrated as I imagined the therapists themselves felt. Their flat, emotionless faces revealed none of that, however. I could never tell what they were thinking.
As a person who gains perceptions visually, I never understood if what I was saying was positive or negative, helpful or hurtful. A natural part of therapy is to connect with the therapist in order to build trust. I found this most more difficult because of the low level of feedback I received. To me, the blank stares indicated distance and personal rejection.
Still, I was aware of the mechanism in therapy of “transference” and understood that if the therapist was good and served as a blank slate, the client was supposed to have the space to do the necessary work. I pondered whether I kept recreating my relationship with my mother with these therapists, and I could not move past this, even though while I wanted to do so move past this I could not.
I wanted to truly connect with my therapists, but their lack of emotion and participation left me detached and confused. I gradually learned to ...
...ed. In fact, they responded with exclamations like, “I guess that could be true.” The interpretation seemed like a stretch by the therapist even in a training video about psychodynamic therapy! I had to wonder what it might look like in real life. Overall, I felt like this therapy might work on clients like the ones portrayed, i.e. clingy self-doubting ones. The techniques seemed to huddle in the arena of suggestibility. In the end I couldn’t help but wonder how such techniques would work on more self-aware strong-willed people like myself.
...In this specific style, the therapist tends to have the most success in gaining knowledge of the patients feelings of inadequacy, fear of intimacy, and low self esteem.
Stickley, T. & Freshwater, D. (2006). “The Art of Listening to the Therapeutic Relationship” Journal of Mental health Practice. 9 (5) pp12 - 18.
The client had developed a dismissive attachment style characterized by two coexisting, but conflicting internal working models. The first working model was a conscious model in which she viewed herself as capable and strong and others as insufficient and needy. The second internal working model was unconscious and refers to her internal belief that she was flawed, inadequate and dependent on others. By validating and gaining insight into the client’s subjective experience, we were able to work on the client’s ability to tolerate the anxiety of her need for connection and the lack of safety she felt in her relational world to express that need. Using my own countertransference and making enactments explicit, we could challenge these internal working models and begin to explore new ways of being. Slowly, she was able to experience a new way of understanding her relational needs, tolerate the grief of lack of attunement from her attachment figures, and develop more intrapsychic space for her affective
Reflecting on my work as a therapist, I recognize the importance of the therapeutic relationship. For instance, in EFT the therapist, “the therapeutic relationship, characterized by presence, empathy, acceptance, and congruence, helps clients to feel safe enough to face dreaded feelings and painful memories (Greenberg, 2014).
The therapist would then interpret this information, which consists of teaching, pointing out and explaining what the therapist is noticing through this free association (Corey, 2013). One of the key factors in a therapeutic process is the client-therapist relationship. Without this relationship, transference cannot be assessed.
It was also made very evident that individuals are connected to everybody else in the world in some way even when the connection is not made fully aware of. Jung stated that we are all connected through repetitive events in which we find meaningful. Research is starting to focus more on synchronicity, thus changing the way individuals view it when it comes to psychotherapy. Walt Whitman as well as Jung believe that once synchronicity is established in therapy, those experiences are then able to build off of each other. Overall, relational therapy might need to involve receptivity and sustained attention awareness in order to aide in the healing process while shifting through the therapeutic process. It was made very clear in this article that client-patient understanding is a very important concept of psychotherapy due to the fact that if the therapist cannot communicate with their patient, the problems in which the patient is suffering from cannot be solved. In addition, when therapists have a close connection with their patients, they are able to understand their feelings more than if not, therefore, they will be able to identify problems and find solutions to those problems. Synchronicity is strongly encouraged to be incorporated in psychotherapy due to the fact that such
In conclusion, Anderson et al. (2010) discussed the relationship between therapeutic models and the techniques utilized by them. However, the contextual model that they posit in this article is built upon a postmodern philosophy and has numerous flaws. As a result, I reject many of their arguments, at least as they are presented. Despite this, there was some information (albeit modified) from this article that I can incorporate into my own practice as a therapist.
While her therapist helps her with her father, the therapist unintentionally improves her relationship with her husband. At Southeastern Louisiana University’s common read, Smith explains, “I think I was able to meet him [her husband] because I cleared up a lot of silly stuff through therapy” (Smith). This confirmation allows the reader to receive a higher understanding of the effect therapy impacted Tracy K. Smith.
The second stage in the psychodynamic therapy process is, the transference stage. In this stage the development of treatment is set and now it is the patient’s time to let their feelings out. The patient expresses those feelings, emotions, fears, and desires to the therapist without having to worry about censorship. The feelings and behavior of the patient become more pronounced and become a vital part of the treatment itself. During this stage the therapist could experience and better understand of the patient’s past and how it impacted their behavior in the
Stickley, T., & Freshwater, D. (2006). The art of listening in the therapeutic relationship. Mental Health Practice, 9 (5), 12-18.
Stickley,T. & Freshwater, D. (2006). “The Art of Listening to the Therapeutic Relationship” Journal of Mental health Practice. 9 (5) pp12 - 18.
Reflective listening gives the client a sense of importance due to them currently having the floor and a moment to express themselves. Reflective listening is orchestrated through acts of showing empathy towards understanding the perspective of one’s feelings. Through this method, the listener does not offer their opinion or perspective while the client speaks. Adding eye contact can also be beneficial or uncomfortable due to client’s background. For example, one’s culture can believe that is it disrespectful not to make eye contact while another may not participate in that activity. During completing the initial assessment with Gwinda, the social work intern participated by allowing her to discuss the need for services. Gwinda further discussed how she is unsure of how the treatments will go and expressed how fearful she was to undergo these different changes. With uncertainty lingering, the social work intern sat next to Gwinda’s bedside ensuring during that moment the client had a listening
Three interrelated attitude of the therapist are central to the success of person-centered therapy, this include: congruence; unconditional positive regard; and empathy (Corey, 2010). Congruence represents the openness and geniuses of the therapists. Therapists who function this way does not hind behind a professional façade, and are willing to share significant emotional reactions with their clients. Unconditional positive regards refers to the therapist accepting the client totally as she or he is without disapproving particular behaviors, believes, feelings or characteristics. Therapists convey this message by their wiliness to listen without being judging, or directive. The therapist who creates a nonthreatening context allows the clients to explore and share their true feelings without fear of being judged. Empathy is the third necessary component of a therapist’s attitude. The therapist should try to see through client’s point to view, and show understanding and sensitivity to client’s feeling throughout the therapy session. When these three attitudes are conveyed by a therapist, according the Rogers, the client can freely express themselves without afraid of being
One of the disadvantages of art therapy is that the therapist is more vulnerable to misinterpretation in terms of the objective understanding of content. Care must be taken not to make rapid interpretations on the specific piece of art which might prevent or even deny the client the satisfaction of discovering and finding out for herself (Case and Dalley, p. 65). This is because art therapy involves a lot of interpretation, it is understandable that critics about this technique are similar to that of psychotherapy. The client’s images can come across as many things with contrasting ideas, but only the individual themself can explain it. The therapist is urged not to point out obvious red signals, instead they should allow the client to come up with their own interpretations. Their own interpretations alone are something to make note of as it may shed some light on the client's thought process about the