Posted by fallsfall on January 2, 2005, at 21:36:06
In reply to how did you define your therapy goals?, posted by ghost on December 26, 2004, at 17:58:44
Everyone is different. Only you can know what you need from therapy.
My goals today (to get back to work) are very different from when I started (to stop driving my best friend crazy with my dependency).
I used to go in with an agenda (though I think the previous poster was right - it was Miss Honeychurch, and KK? who did the great threads on agendas). But neither of my therapists thought my agendas were helpful. Because my agendas meant that I had already role played the whole session, and I already had expectations about what was going to happen. So I try not to plan too much. I usually figure out how to get started (i.e. brief chronological update since last session or jump into the issue from last session or introduce new topic) so I don't sit there with my mouth open for 5 minutes at the beginning. But if nothing strikes me before hand as something important, I try to go in without an agenda. And I tell him what I'm thinking about. Some of our most valuable sessions have been the times when I haven't had anything in particular to talk about.
But agendas and goals aren't really the same thing.
I guess to figure out what your goals are you might try completing these sentances:
I would be happier if ...
I wish that I could ...
Most people can ..., I wonder why I can't?
I get really uncomfortable/unhappy when ...
I think that I'm different from everyone else because I ...I guess the bottom line is to try to figure out what kinds of changes you would like to make that would make your life better. Those can be your therapy goals.
poster:fallsfall
thread:434398
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041228/msgs/437008.html