What Happens During The Therapy Hour?

If you are a little bird that passed by the window, what would you hear and witness happen during the therapy hour?

At times, people ask about this in one way or another. Whether seeking psychotherapy or not, they wish to understand this “mystery.”

As one friend told me, “I wonder what you talk about and do there.”

The little bird would hear and see two essential things during the therapy hour: content and process.

CONTENT.

The meaning of content is obvious, of course.

It’s the issues, topics, and concerns being discussed by therapist and patient/s.

Content is varied.

Usually, it can be specific parts of experience of the whole of life, such as relationships, love, sex, career struggles, marital or parenting problems, financial disorders, existential concerns, or addictions.

PROCESS.

The texture of the process of psychotherapy is crucial to therapeutic and life change.

It’s the “relationship,” or solid therapeutic alliance often referred to in professional clinical psychology literature.

That’s the nature and dynamic of connection and interaction that happens during the therapy hour between therapist and patient/s.

In general, content is never enough. Nobody gets healed by information alone.

Psychotherapy needs sufficient synergy of “ideas-plus-relationship.” Content is effective only when the relationship is solid.

There it is in a nutshell, where life-changing therapeutic power or magic lies ... and should be.