How To Relax In Therapy

How To Relax In Therapy

How To Relax In Therapy – Numerous issues can make clients feel anxious or tense in therapy. Some of the most common include:

• Reluctance to seek treatment. Many clients pursue treatment at the behest of someone else, such as a partner. If a client is only seeking treatment because of someone else, they may not believe in the process or want to openly share their feelings. Clients receiving court-ordered treatment may fear that what they share in therapy will be shared with third parties, or they may be resentful about the treatment. Children may worry the therapist is on their parent’s “side” or that the therapist will not respect their confidentiality.
• The client’s mental health. Some mental health conditions make it more difficult to trust a therapist. A person experiencing paranoid delusions may struggle to trust the therapist or worry they are an agent of a third party. A client with posttraumatic stress (PTSD) may fear sharing their story requires reliving their trauma.
• A history of bad therapy. Some therapists are unskilled or abusive. A client who has seen several therapists in a short period of time may have experienced abusive or ineffective therapy. This can make them reluctant to open up again, though the decision to give therapy another try points to their hope for a different outcome this time.
• Therapist anxiety and experience. Clients are more likely to discontinue therapy when a therapist is new or unskilled. New therapists may feel anxious in therapy, and those feelings can affect their interactions with clients, making it more difficult for the client to share. Some therapists do not know how to help clients open up. Others feel unusually anxious around silent clients or find these clients trigger their own feelings of insecurity or fears of inadequacy.
• Trauma. A history of trauma can make it difficult for a client to trust others, including their therapist.
• Therapist’s body language. Clients do more than listen to what a therapist says. They also observe a therapist’s body language for signs of judgment, discomfort, or boredom. If a client thinks the therapist is not listening or is silently judging them, they may quickly shut down.
• Fear of judgment. It’s natural to fear judgment, even in therapy. People who seek therapy may never have told anyone else the things they discuss in therapy. It takes time to warm up, and it’s critical that a therapist never make a client feel judged.
• Client-therapist mismatch. Not all therapists are a good match for all clients. While therapists and their clients do not have to share the same personality or values, they must be able to establish a shared baseline. When the therapist and client have radically different worldviews or approaches, there may be a mismatch. For example, a very conservative Christian client may fear judgment from a very liberal atheist therapist, while the therapist may not know how to help the client live up to their own values.
• Discomfort in the therapeutic environment. Subtle issues with the therapeutic environment itself can make it more difficult to open up. If the room has thin walls, a client may worry about privacy. A draft, feeling too cold or hot, physical discomfort, and other easily remedied issues may also play a role. In some cases, decorations or other features in the room can undermine a client’s confidence. For example, a client who sees a book that contradicts their own values or that stigmatizes mental health may be reluctant to share.
• Cultural or religious norms. A person’s views about their own emotional experiences can affect their ability to talk about their feelings. Men who endorse a rigid view of masculinity may have difficulty discussing how they feel, for instance.

Therapists should be willing to address barriers to opening up before asking the client to share the intimate details of their life. Treat discomfort as the first therapeutic issue to be tackled, and listen with an open mind about how therapy makes the client feel.