Posted by fallsfall on September 17, 2007, at 14:49:57
In reply to How long into therapy can you see progress?, posted by girlnterrupted78 on September 16, 2007, at 22:41:53
One size does not fit all. How long it takes to feel better depends on you, your history, your therapist, their therapeutic orientation etc.
CBT works faster than psychodynamic, but it may only address the symptoms, not the causes. For some people this is plenty and they feel better in 6 sessions or 6 months or so.
Psychodynamic takes longer because it works more on the underlying causes. I think that many of us on this board are in psychodynamic therapy (and that is why you will hear about years of therapy rather than months of therapy. Also, people who feel better fast don't tend to look for a board like this, so we all tend to be the "harder" cases).
Speed can also depend on what your issues are. If your issues make it hard to do the work in therapy (like if you have trust issues), you have to work through those issues before you can get started in "feeling better". Though, once you have worked through those issues you might feel better!
Of course, if you have lots of issues it will take longer to feel better than if you only have a few.
I would encourage you to ask your therapist about how she sees your progress/or lack there of. Also if you bring something up and she doesn't seem to want to talk about it, you should ask her why. It is more important to talk about what YOU think is important than what SHE thinks is important.
Therapy CAN work wonders. It has helped me to go from only being able to do crossstitch on the couch to almost being done with my Masters in Library Science.
poster:fallsfall
thread:783392
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070916/msgs/783487.html