Client Motivation In Therapy

What's the likelihood that therapy will have any beneficial effects for a client who is not motivated to undertake the journey involved?

Motivation here would include things like: being aware that you are somehow in distress, or that you are not functioning as well as you'd like to be, or that you behave in ways that are counter productive/destructive/injurious; recognizing that you need some help to "sort things out", that you have not been able to "fix" things on your own, even though you may have tried repeatedly; and then, with all of this awareness and understanding, actually seeking help.

This would be different, for example, from a man who, when asked what brings him to therapy, answers that he is doing it because he told his wife that he would. (Did his wife threaten to leave him if he didn't? Does he expect that he will be able to appease her - and maybe get her off of his back - if he appears for a couple of sessions?)

This would also be different from someone appearing for therapy because they have been court ordered to do so, while their only motivation is to avoid going to jail.

Of course, it is possible for someone in the above examples, while they may not be motivated initially in the sense that I have described, to develop some level of motivation on their own behalf if they only appear with some regularity, but this would be, in my experience, an exception, rather than a rule.

So how ought such a client (I use this term somewhat loosely here, since such a person is, by definition, not a "real" client at all) and such a situation, be approached? Of course there is no single correct answer to that question, and different therapists will indeed answer it differently. Let me then answer it only for myself.

As a bit of background information, there was a time, much earlier in my professional career, when I was willing to try to motivate unmotivated clients "for their own good", so to speak. I believed that I could indeed somehow convince these clients that the process of therapy, and in particular, the process of therapy with me, was just what they needed. It could and would truly help them, and they ought to become converted to this view.

What I discovered over some time with this approach was that not only was I wrong in my expectations, but that the process of attempting to motivate someone else to do what I believed was going to be helpful to them succeeded only in exhausting me, and did not do much good, if it did any good, for this "client". I have since settled into what I consider to be a much more realistic and intelligent approach. This consists of being fully available to any client whom I believe I can actually help, as long as they are sufficiently motivated to be helped. To put it another way, as I was taught long ago, and as I have come to appreciate as sage wisdom, the therapist should never work harder than the client in therapy.

If you are considering therapy, also consider your level of motivation for being helped, for making positive, healthy and rewarding changes, and for being willing to work at this, rather than expecting your therapist to miraculously fix you through their own efforts. I'm not sure that I see any point in beginning something that you are not able or willing to invest yourself in.
mdavid-lpcc.com

A Ramble Into Change Making

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything, so I thought I'd visit and see where an aimless ramble might lead; or as one client calls it, "babbling". In reality, this "babbling" always leads to something meaningful, and unforeseen. Maybe that will be the case now.

The theme of how change might be effectively facilitated is an interesting one, and there seem to be at least two very divergent views on this. One being what I'll call the more common view, that change is best facilitated by some kind of active "assault", or effort in the direction of the desired outcome. If you want to feel less anxious, for example, you set about to reason with yourself, and even argue yourself out of the irrational ideas that you harbor that actually create and cause your anxiety. When once you've seen the light of this reason, and have managed to actively and even aggressively replace your misguided thoughts with more realistic ones - one's that accurately reflect a set of circumstances and conditions which would not lend themselves to distressing levels of anxiety - you will, naturally and automatically, so to say, feel less anxious. This strategy does indeed work, for some people, in some situations. I like it, and I use it, when appropriate.

Then there is the much less known or understood method which says that it is possible to take a more "passive", or, more accurately, a more contemplative or reflective approach to the situation, in which one learns, through practice, and through the development of the capacity for a heightened tolerance of distress, to be more accepting of oneself in all of one's moods and qualities, allowing the inevitable process of organic change to take place without too much interference.
There are some keys to the successful implementation of this approach, and they include the aforementioned capacity to tolerate distress, to "sit with" -as in sitting meditation, for example - one's experience, while learning how to let go of judgments about it and about oneself, and to relate with oneself and with one's experience more tolerantly, more forgivingly, more compassionately.

This method or approach makes certain working assumptions, of course, among them being the one that says that desirable change will occur in a context, in an internal environment, of kindness and gentleness with oneself, perhaps more easily, but certainly more gracefully than under aggressive terms. You could say then that this approach gives a higher value to this context/environment than the former one does. I like this too, in that the metaphor is closer to something like organic gardening than to field maneuvers. Let's pay attention to the soil in which we are planning to grow something wholesome and delicious. Let's cultivate it, prepare it with the proper healthy supplements, tend it and it's produce. Like raising healthy children. This will significantly increase the likelihood of a desirable outcome.
This method, it seems to me, is much more in accord with the urgently needed concepts of sustainability and conservation.

mdavid-lpcc.com