MAKING A DIFFERENCE
How quickly therapy will take to make a difference will vary from client to client. What is certainly true is that the simple process of talking in a therapeutically trained environment can of itself make a difference.
HOW?
The research all points to the ability of what is known as a therapeutic relationship, known as the therapeutic alliance, to be the key factor to making a difference to clients. This alliance underpins the work of the counsellor in the counselling relationship. Some therapists are more able than others to create this space.
Neuroscientific evidence demonstrates that the brain, wired though our previous experience, can create different connections which come to represent a different basis of our experience of relationship from which to change our feelings and behavioural response.
THE THERAPEUTIC ALLIANCE
What should be emphasised is that therapy and counselling are not pills. Therapy can provide the basis for a permanent change in quality of life.
The underlying point being that it is not the therapist that does the work! The therapist will support the client. The client comes into therapy with a life that is not working and works with the therapist to gain different insights and perspectives which the client then applies outside the therapy room.
The alliance is a ‘working alliance’ in which the client works at confronting old assumptions and convictions with the benefit of different insights creating different responses.
SO HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR COUNSELLING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE
As I said above, there is usually an immediate response based upon the relief of a different experience. Where clients are able to engage with the work of the alliance then permanent changes can be made in our brain, our synaptic connections, which will change our default feelings and assumptions. The work is a combination of both the therapists and clients relationship.