Sunday, May 16, 2010

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.
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