Psychotherapy and counseling are not like auto mechanics, rocket science, or computer programming.
Or, at least, those disciplines are not sufficient metaphors. Our mind-brains don’t work that way, either. For my money, they will not respond as therapeutically well to an approach that treats them like machines, nor to an approach involving being treated by one.
A bench press is simple, right? Lower the bar to your chest, push it off your chest. But for high loads, the entire body must be extremely strong (including even the back and legs). There is also a technique for keeping the movement simple (proper), which is how it can stay safe. It’s just a press but at that level, all sorts of elements come into play. Simple movement, but not easy to get or maintain.
But…isn’t therapy just talking and advice?
“You know,” one might ask, “just filling the entire session with ‘problem content’ and ‘solution content’ with a brilliant therapist who gives you data translated and digested for you from their secret books, and who always spares you from pain? That kind of simple?”
No, that’s not the best therapy. And ‘all the secrets’ is not even real. Neither is progress occurring with no discomfort. Neither is progress if you just have systematically correct ‘on-paper’ programming (just like working out…). We are not machines, especially psychologically speaking.
To rejoin the weight training analogy, working out is painful to a tolerable but noticeable degree at the time, and for a bit after (soreness). If the discomfort was unnoticeable at the time and is unnoticeable just after, the training won’t do much for you. If it’s incredibly painful, you are going to get seriously hurt. Therapy should rarely be incredibly painful. If it is ever more than moderately so, it normally would occur naturally because of the intense nature of what you are trying to heal. And at such rare times, it should be managed in terms of supporting your tolerance limits and gradually expanding them, not breaking you psychologically.
The way you get results in the longer term is tolerable but noticeable discomfort, mixed with an odd sense of satisfaction—ideally with an encouraging, motivating, knowledgeable trainer in a controlled, scheduled, completely secure context. The other piece is consistency; you do it again to progress, or even just to maintain.
In therapy, with a therapist as your trainer, there will be repeated, fascinating but tolerably uncomfortable discoveries. Experience of, and help with, the unknown, emotional pain, scary things, desires, blocked joy. Things you didn’t know needed developing. Necessary setbacks you didn’t know needed to be unwound before winding them again. But there isn’t a one-step, miraculous initiation or immediate solution.
Is the conception that therapy is reducible to content, tasks, and techniques wrong or bad, then?
The good news is that parts of what I call the common conception of therapy are not bad, or even wrong. However, that conception represents a therapy that is just the beginning. It is a necessary therapy but not a sufficient one. At least I think so, and I’m not alone.
My bet is that when interaction, advice, plans, even excellent guesses about emotional state, can just be purchased and guided by an app, many will try that. Yet, my other bet is that they will be left wondering why something seems missing. Something missing, even though they bought (‘bot’?) all the solutions and experiences that are labeled and sold as vetted, sensible, and / or currently cool.
So, what is better therapy—better than preplanned, mechanically precise, or even algorithmic?
I would not presume to know the precise specifics for each person and situation. However, in my next post I will give a good but imperfect generalization of what better to excellent therapy / counseling might look like.