Creating Goals for Therapy
You’ve finally decided to go to therapy. You’ve read profiles of therapists online and imagined talking to them. Or if you’re lucky, someone told you about someone they thought was good. You’ve filled out the intake paperwork. You’ve scheduled an appointment. But somewhere between making that appointment and sitting in front of the therapist, it hits you: “What exactly do I want help with?” This can feel daunting. Now, hopefully you’ve got a therapists who knows this dilemma and is prepared to ask questions to guide both of you to a place where you can work on tangible and realistic goals. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. These aren’t bad therapists, it’s just that they may be focused on different things, especially early on. And this can be confusing – there you are sitting there spending lots of money for a session that doesn’t seem to have a point. So, I’ve written this article to try and help. Some of this is mine, but much of it comes from a form of therapy that is the foundation of my work – Solution-Focused Brief Therapy – which I’ve found offers good ideas about how to create useful goals in therapy.
Before we start, however, let’s talk briefly about the sheer idea of creating goals for therapy. Not everybody likes this and so it may not work for everyone. But if you don’t want to identify your goals – what you want help with from your therapist – you might ask yourself why you’re in therapy in the first place. People attend therapy for all kinds of reasons. Some are useful and others are not. The most common not-useful goal in therapy is surrogate friendship. Conscious or not, people feel lonely and want a therapist to just hang out with them. This may sound surprising, but it’s what some therapists easily become. Now, loneliness is a great reason to start therapy, but instead of making your therapist the solution, the goal might be for the two of you to figure out how you can find and connect with more people in your life. But to try and make your therapist your friend will only result in disappointment. Therapy eventually ends and so it’s a way better idea to find friends in your personal life that can know you forever, than to get a temporary fix from a therapist.
A common reason I’ve found why people don’t want to identify goals for therapy is because, out of fear or anxiety, they’re avoiding their problems. Maybe the real problem is some kind of addiction, or a problematic relationship they don’t want to leave, but whatever it is, they would like the focus of therapy be on anything but that. And this makes sense. Facing our real issues is challenging. And I’ve found that when this is the case, people are often torn; part of them wanting to deal with it, while another part doesn’t. So, a goal here might be just getting to know these different parts of you so you can decide for yourself if you’re ready to work on the problem. Sometimes people fear that if they bring something up in therapy then they have to deal with it, but that is not the case. Therapy should move within your timing and readiness for change, and sometimes just naming the problem is all we can do. And that’s huge.
One tough thing to bring up here, but also quite necessary, is that part of therapy being successful is coming to terms with the fact that the only person you can really change in therapy is you. Yuck. I know. It’s not a fun fact. Very often, people come to therapy, not because they feel they have problems, but because they’ve got one or more people in their lives who they feel are the real problem and if they could just get them to be different, life would be easier. And I’ll tell you, often they’re not wrong. Sometimes it’s us and sometimes is someone else. The problem is we can’t change other people. We all know this, we just don’t’ like admitting it.
So, as you think about goals for therapy, you might ask yourself: Are you hoping to make changes with yourself or with someone else? Now, if it's really about changing someone else, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t start therapy. Therapy often starts out with wanting other people to change. But it’s just that you want to be honest about that, so you can also know that eventually you’ll be looking towards what is it that might need to change within you to help resolve the situation.
With those preliminary concerns out of the way, developing goals for therapy starts with looking at what you’d like to be different in your life as a result of therapy. In particular, what you’d like to see yourself doing differently. Why doing? Because when we focus on something tangible, like actions, we can really see if anything’s changing. Now, I know, most people come to therapy hoping it will help them feel differently, usually better, and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s my hope for my client’s too. But when just feeing better is the goal, now we’re often signing up for life-long therapy because our feelings are just so fickle. One day we feel good, the next day we feel bad. That’s life. Of course, this is different than chronic depression or anxiety, where you’re feeling bad most of the days of our life. But even then, the goal is still about what you hope you’ll be doing differently in the future that will tell you, you’re feeling better. When we look for how our improved mood will shape our behavior we can more easily work towards change.
If this feels like enough, you can certainly stop here. Having some idea of what you hope you’ll be doing differently as a result of therapy is great information for therapists. But if you’re just loving this and want more, there are more questions you can consider. The more you refine what you’re looking for from therapy, the more therapy can focus on getting you there, and the less therapeutic wandering around you’ll hopefully have to do. Other questions might be:
When is the last time the problem your facing now was just a little bit less?
What do you know about what was different back then?
What or who helped, back then?
What do you see as your first step towards being able to solve the problem(s) your facing?
These questions are not exhaustive, but they’re designed to help you shine a light on what needs to change now so that you can have the future you want. But if all of this seems just too overwhelming, that’s okay. Many people start therapy simply because they feel like they need to be there, yet without knowing exactly what they want help with or what they hope for. If this is the case for you, no problem. Your questions might be:
What’s happening in your life right now that makes you want to start therapy?
What do you wish were different in your life?
Showing up for therapy with just these things in mind is a huge step. It helps you understand your choice more and helps your therapist get a sense of at least what may be not working for you, which can help point both of you towards what may need to change.
Again, I hope your first meeting with your therapist starts off this way without you having to lead the way, but if it doesn’t it doesn’t mean you need to immediately scrap your therapist. Remember, your therapist works for you. You’ve hired them to help you make changes in your life. This means you want to be looking to see if anything actually is changing. But for meaningful change to occur, you have to know what it is that your seeking. There’s no rule book for this. I don’t have a big book of goals for everyone’s problems that I consult and then prescribe directions from. Therapy is a collaborative process where the client seeks some kind of change, and the therapist helps the client make those changes. This means the process must start with you. So, I hope this article has helped give you some direction with that.
As always, please take from this what feels true for you and leave the rest. You are the best judge of what is right for you. Not me. So, listen to yourself first and foremost.
Thanks for reading,
Jake