What can you do to get the most out of your therapy sessions? What basic communication and relationship skills (see videos, below), can you learn in order to improve all your relationships, not just your relationship with your therapist?

One day a few months ago, I was doing a weekly training for therapists and one of them said, “I wish my patients could sit in on this training—it would be really beneficial to them.”

Bingo! It occurred to me that if I could distill some of the information about communication skills that I impart to therapists and patients—keep the content simple and the explanations brief—it might help patients get more from therapy.

Some therapists do prompt their patients to use a variety of communication skills, explaining their benefits, and demonstrating them during sessions. I myself do this in virtually every individual or group session and have done so for many years.

For example, today I ran a psychotherapy group for 12 people. Towards the end of the group, I asked them if anyone would like to summarize what we had spoken about. A number of patients did, and it prompted additional discussion. People pulled together all the ideas we had talked about and how it related to them individually and shared it with the group. Because of the discussion—which grew quite impassioned—we even found some new solutions. Of course, learning and using basic communication skills works in individual therapy, too. And you can generalize the skills you work on with your therapist and use them in all your relationships.

I test-ran these first three videos on a couple of therapists and patients and they gave constructive feedback. More videos are on the way, but for now I hope these will be helpful to you. If you have any comments or questions, I look forward to hearing from you.

Skills for Psychotherapy Patients: Part I

Skills for Psychotherapy Patients: Part II-Asking Questions

Skills for Psychotherapy Patients: Part III-Summarizing

Coming soon:  Part III-A Examples of Summarizing, Concrete Terms, and more.

If you would like more information about Therapy Revolution in practice or want to sign up for our newsletter, please go to www.richardzwolinski.com.

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    Last reviewed: 10 Feb 2010