Is Counseling therapy effective? What happens in a session?

If you are considering taking counseling therapy for the first time, you would possibly have the following 2 questions:

1. Is Counseling really effective? How can talking to someone about a problem - fix it?

2. How long or how many sessions would it take to fix my problem or see any result?

If you are on Question 2, I recommend you read this article. If however, you are not convinced that counseling is effective or are curious to learn more, spare 3 mins and read on.

To answer this question upfront - Yes counseling sessions are effective when you are dedicated to solve the problem at hand and are transparent with your counselor. A typical therapy session at SPARSH lasts 45 minutes where we employ CBT & NLP techniques to uncover the root causes to your problem and help you create & use simple solutions to overcome one hurdle at a time.

A complete therapy cycle involves the following sessions:

1. First consultation session

   1. In the very first session, we invite you to describe your current situation and the problem(s) you face.

   2. Based on what you reveal, we highlight possible solutions that you could achieve through counseling therapy.

   3. At no point do we judge or criticize what you express. In fact, we encourage absolute honesty and transparency as this helps us understand your perspective and identify the root cause(s) to your problem.

   4. We then help you create a draft roadmap of possible milestones (goals) that you would want to achieve at subsequent counseling sessions as you proactively take action to solving your problem(s).

2. Therapy sessions

   1. Every therapy session is effectively a problem solving session.

   2. Based on the consultation session, we start working on first milestone (goal).

   3. We invite you to share any updates about your situation or the problem at hand.

   4. Using CBT or NLP techniques to provide you guidelines on what to say (or not say) and what to do (or not do) in specific scenarios

   5. We talk through different situations like conflict resolution, view certain events from a neutral perspective and possibly Role play 'challenging conversations'.

   6. If there are multiple persons involved we work towards building broken trust, clearing out miscommunications and creating a spirit of forgiveness.

   7. Therapy sessions are usually conducted done in batches of 4 session and help ensure that you have enough time to work on different areas of the problem and report progress

3. Handover session

   1. After sufficient milestones have been met in the therapy sessions and there is satisfactory improvement is reached, we conclude the therapy with a final session leaving you with the resources and tools you need to be self sufficient

   2. I then check in with you once every few months to verify if everything is going as expected.

Some clients take 8 sessions while others can take 25 sessions to see definitive results. Ultimately, the effectiveness of counseling therapy lies in the resilience of the client (with the help of the counselor) to overcome their problem.

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up" - Galatians 6:9