How To Be "Good" At Therapy

a lot of people will like so a lot of people will say like go see a therapist but then a lot of people are like kind of confused because they've never seen a therapist they don't know how it works and then they think like oh like i don't know how to do that because i've never done it before so that makes perfect sense because we're not really taught like what the the rules of therapy are so what we're going to try to do is i'm going to try to share a couple of like four basic points about you know how to approach therapy so the first is that it's not your responsibility to know what the rules of therapy are so i know this is like a really challenging thing to understand but you know when you go to the hospital like let's say you go see your doctor like let's say you get diagnosed with like cancer okay so heaven forbid it's not your job to know like what to do it's not even your job to like seek a diagnosis right so as medical doctors like all you have to do is go see your doctor and your doctor it's their responsibility to like you know check your body check it for lumps do a colonoscopy after you're 50 years old like do a mammogram after a certain age it's the expert's job to know what to do right so i think about like going to a car mechanic like you just go in and you say hey my car is making a weird noise and they're like what kind of noise and you're like i don't know like you know you just you're it's you're not supposed to know you're not supposed to know if it's a fan belt or a carburetor or like a you know like an oil leak you're not supposed to know anything you're just supposed to show up you're supposed to be like here i am here's a basic direction for my problem my car doesn't seem to be working right you don't even you just say that so with a therapist all you really need to come in with is like just a general reason and it doesn't even have to be a good one you can just say like life is hard for me right now right and they're gonna help you figure it out so the first thing is that you it's not your responsibility like how to know like how to be good in therapy like you can even go in and ask your therapist how am i supposed to do this i've never done this before and like we're all trained to help orient you to like how this works so for example anytime i see someone for the first time i'll ask them hey have you ever been in therapy like do you understand how this stuff works they'll be like no and i'd be like hey can i take a few minutes to explain it to you they'll be like yeah i'd really appreciate that right so that's like part of my opener as a therapist if someone comes in i understand that like most people don't know how this works so i have to explain to them the rules of the game so the first thing is you don't have to know so just you don't have to know really anything you just show up with a general idea of what you're looking for you can say i feel depressed or i'm lusting over a streamer or you know like whatever i don't know what's wrong with my life i just feel like i'm stuck like all that kind of stuff is perfect you just need like one sentence of generally speaking why you're coming you can even go in and say hey i'm not even sure why i'm here but like i've heard that a lot of people benefit from therapy so i'm here to try it out and like that's actually awesome so then like the therapist knows okay cool i know what i'm dealing with they'll start to ask you questions and stuff like that they'll take over right you just have to bring the car to the shop and then the mechanic will figure out what they're supposed to do so the second thing is that a second thing to understand is that therapy is not a passive process so some people will say like oh if this is your problem go to therapy and so what some people will do is they'll like go to therapy and they'll be like here i am therapize me and fix it you know like but that's not actually how therapy works so the success in therapy has to do with how much the patient is invested and how much the therapist is invested so when you go to therapy like expect to do the work it's not your job to know what you're supposed to do but you still have to do the work so a lot of times people will say i tried therapy and it didn't work for me and oftentimes when i dig into those kinds of cases i'll say like what didn't work for you and oftentimes what i'll run across maybe like 30 to 40 percent of people are like very very passive and don't actually like try to do anything so the analogies i'd use here is like going to work with a personal trainer so the personal trainer is the expert like you can walk up to a personal trainer and you can say hey i'm trying to get into shape that's all you have to say they will figure out they'll figure out the how right it's not your job to understand like how these weights work or whether you should do cardio or whether you should do like you know heavy weights or like low reps or high reps or body weight exercises or like parkour or like a decathlon like it's not your job to figure it out it's their job to figure it out but once they tell you what to do you have to sit down and actually lift the weights and so i'd say therapy is kind of the same way where you can't just show up it's not like a passive procedure like a biopsy or an x-ray where you just sit there and they do it to you it's not like taking a pill where you just like just swallow and then like the antidepressant is going to work its magic as a therapy you have to be an active participant and even if you say i don't know how to do that that's a great thing to ask your therapist you can ask your therapist hey how am i being active enough like should i be doing more like how can i be a better patient in therapy like but generally speaking don't assume it's a passive process understand that when you go in the more you think the more you share and the more kind of vulnerable you are for lack of a better term you have to try right you have to persevere you have to be patient those are all really important parts of therapy so the third thing to understand is that in addition to trying if it's not working you need to bring it up with your therapist this is probably the thing that is if i were to pick one prognostic factor so one factor that predicts success in therapy versus not success in therapy it's the patient bringing up their concerns with the therapist so as a therapist we're not like mind readers right if you come in and you kind of like say and i ask you hey how are things going and you say like everything is going well because you're trying to be polite because you don't want your therapist to feel bad that their therapy is not helping you so you're actually trying to protect them from feeling bad because oh it's not their fault it's your fault because you know you're so depressed that you're unhelpable but you need to tell therapists if stuff isn't working so you've got to say hey i've been coming here for like a month or two like i'm not really feeling a whole lot better can we talk about that like i feel like i come here every week and we talk about my feelings but i actually am not seeing much change in my life like this is not what i was hoping for i was hoping for more and they may ask you what were you hoping for and then you may say i'm not sure but but it isn't this which is a completely acceptable answer so then it is the therapist's responsibility you may feel in that moment like oh how is this person supposed to help me if i don't even know what i want and then you're going to feel ashamed of yourself and you're not going to want to share that but it's absolutely the therapist's responsibility and your responsibility for the two of you to figure it out together that's what therapy is about it's a co-op game right so if someone even if you don't understand like how to cook like if you take a bite of something you say it tastes off and you're not the trained chef and then the chef asks you like how does it taste off and you're like i'm not sure it just doesn't taste good and then then like the chef should start asking you questions right they should start like oh is it like is it too salty no okay fine does it need some spice no it's the spice is fine oh maybe like how about some citrus like let's try a little bit of citrus and you're like oh yeah that's in the right direction so you have to bring up your concerns with your therapist about it not working okay that's the third thing you've got to do and the fourth thing is to remember that modalities of therapy are different so therapy much like food has many different varieties okay so you've got like the third wave of therapies which include like a lot of mindfulness so this is like acceptance and commitment therapy dialectical behavioral therapy then before that kind of the second generation of therapy was like cognitive behavioral therapy and so that tends to be a little bit more structured like sometimes you have worksheet and homework it's worksheets and homework like it's like very like first you do this then you do this then you do this it's very systematic and then like you know way before that you had like freud and jung who would do like psychoanalysis so freud would like have people lay down on a couch and he would sit behind them and wouldn't say anything for an hour and like they'd meet for like one hour a day like it was like a daily therapy thing where people are like free associating so there are lots of different models of therapy it's sort of like saying i don't like video games like you may not like video you may not like fps you may like you know mobas you may not like mobas you may like you know chess you may not like chess you may like you know candy crush or whatever and so there are lots of different kinds of cuisines and lots of different types of therapy so if you're not if something isn't working for you you can also you know try out something else or even bring that up with your therapist in addition to the different modalities there are different levels of activity so one thing that i've observed is that a lot of people seem to like my style which is a very like high activity style so some people don't like it like some people will you know think that they want me to like stfu but you know so so i think something is changing where like this generation like the digital generation is looking for more active therapists in my experience so a lot of the older therapists who are a little bit more passive who are a little bit like let's just see where this goes you can't rush therapy it's going to take six months it's going to take a year it's going to take two years it's going to take three years i get bored and impatient i'm like i want there's a lot of impatience in some therapists but i think that there's a lot of impatience with a lot of patients as well but that's kind of like i think that's okay whereas i think a lot of my colleagues like feel like that's a bad thing and one of the most important things that you can teach in therapy is you have to teach a patient to be patient i sort of disagree a little bit there i think it's a little bit paternalistic and it's like oh we have to teach you how it is because you don't know the right the truth but so i i think that remember that there's a lot of different modalities of therapy there's a lot of different like types of therapists so two cbt therapists may not be the same i've worked with some cbt therapists that are very focused on the past i've worked some that kind of completely ignore the past so there's a lot of different stuff to do so remember if you're kind of considering therapy and you don't know how to do it the first thing to remember is that you're not expected how to do it they're the expert right so that's what they're there for they're there to help orient you so just take your car to the mechanic and say it's making a weird sound and when they're like then it's their job to figure it out second thing is to remember that it's an active process so you can't just show up and like get yourself therapized it's not like getting a cortisone shot you know into a joint it's not like taking an antibiotic pill or an antidepressant you have to show up there and the therapist is sort of like a personal trainer or that's really what we kind of think of as coaches um you know the the coach is a personal trainer for the mind but at the end of the day you're gonna have to show up and do some of the work right like ideally 50 of it third thing is if it isn't working for some reason bring that up with them because that's something that you all have to problem solve together and the fourth thing is to remember that not all therapists are the same and not all modalities are the same so even if you don't it's you know just because you don't like french cuisine doesn't mean you don't like food it's just that's one kind of cuisine and there's indian food and there's sushi and there's like you know thai food and there's like nigerian cuisine there's all these different kinds of cuisine and so before you write off quiz like food as a whole try a couple of different things then a couple of chefs within the cuisine right they're going to be like different versions of sushi there's like you know the americanized version of sushi which is like lots of different toppings and sauces and stuff like that and there's like the classic like you know sort of japanese sushi which is just like you know fish or rice and fish with a little bit of wasabi or whatever there are different flavors of even an individual modality so if you guys are thinking about therapy definitely check it out you don't have to know how to be good at therapy before you do it and lean on your therapist to help show you the way you

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

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Keywords: but the people are, datto, doctor k, dr k depression, dr k interview, dr k suicide, dr kanojia, dr.k, drk, gaming, glaciator 2 spoiler, healthy gamer gg, healthygamergg, how to, how to be good at therapy, inner monologue, lofi, mental health, psychiatrist, therapy, twitch

Id: Z0cImkA_eV4

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021