{"id":19239,"date":"2022-04-05T00:00:35","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T06:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/?p=19239"},"modified":"2024-02-23T11:44:35","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T17:44:35","slug":"how-to-keep-your-therapy-client-on-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/how-to-keep-your-therapy-client-on-track\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Keep Your Therapy Client on Track"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.”<\/em><\/p>\n

– Alfred A. Montapert<\/p>\n

Stuart shook his head as he summarized his week with one word.<\/p>\n

“Disaster!”<\/p>\n

The week before he’d come to see me to quit smoking. Here was a yellow-fingered man who’d puffed and sputtered his lung-damaging way through “never less than 45” cigarettes a day for 30 years. That was getting on for a total of half a million “cancer sticks”, as he called them.<\/p>\n

In our previous session I had used hypnosis<\/a> with him. I’d used many of the smoking reframes<\/a> I’d later develop into the ‘How to stop anyone smoking’ course<\/a>, and I’d felt as if we’d really made some progress. So had he \u2013 when he’d made the appointment for this week, he’d referred to it as merely a “top-up”. But what he’d said just now had me worried.<\/p>\n

Resisting the temptation to feel crestfallen, I decided to dig deeper and learn what the nature of this disaster might really be.<\/p>\n

What is really going on?<\/h3>\n

Stuart had seen me on the previous Tuesday. He had not smoked on the Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, but had gone out on the Saturday and had five cigarettes, which he hadn’t enjoyed at all. He had not felt like smoking again since, and it was now Tuesday evening!<\/p>\n

This ‘disaster’ was clearly nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n

I gently pointed out that it was a good initial improvement. Going from compulsively smoking 45 cigarettes a day to only 5 in a week \u2013 which he hadn’t even enjoyed! \u2013 was, he conceded, an improvement.<\/p>\n

And yet I had to remind him of this. Stuart, like so many others before and after him, had been looking at quitting in all-or-nothing terms.<\/p>\n

Sometimes a depressed, addicted, or compulsive client will need help to be able to see how far they have come, and how far they might<\/em> well go. Along with helping clients believe they really can get better<\/a>, this ratification of progress can be vital to therapy.<\/p>\n

Monitoring then ratifying client progress<\/h3>\n

We practitioners need to know where the therapy is going<\/a>. This means being aware of the ‘signposts’ on the way to therapeutic success.<\/p>\n

We need to develop goals with the client so we, and importantly they, will know when they’re on the right track, and also when our work with them is done<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So establish early on the answers to the following questions:<\/p>\n