Does every loss, farewell or closure in our lives leave us full of uncertainty and fear for what awaits us?Especially if when we finish something we have a support that we will no longer have, so some fears also appear as the end of life. In this case, when the objectives initially proposed in therapy were achieved, we face the derivation or completion of therapy and, with it, the fear of relapses and not being able to face the world without security. psychological support can offer.
These fears are very common. Therefore, to ensure a successful end to the therapeutic process, they must be treated in therapy before concluding it, for this it is common to use different techniques aimed at different objectives, all related to the fear that we are talking about:
- Although it may seem simple.
- Each patient and each therapeutic process is different.
- So it is necessary to analyze each case individually.
- Taking this into account.
- In this article we will discuss.
- In a general way.
- How to help our patients to successfully cope with the suspension.
- Treatment.
When a patient enters a psychological consultation he usually does so in the hope that the psychologist will solve his problems, this usually happens because we are used to the medical model in which a professional prescribes an external solution that usually does not require exceptional changes in our lives. At least nothing is harder than taking pills at certain times.
But, as many people don’t know, a good psychologist doesn’t work like that, psychological therapy seeks to make the patient who initiates therapy their best therapist: effectively master and use the tools that the psychologist has provided. .
This is not to say that when a person who has had a psychological problem and has successfully treated him, becomes a self-training person to serve others or give them advice, but this means that as an expert in yourself and in your own problem, you can, once therapy is finished, apply everything learned during this process without the need for continuous psychological monitoring or supervision.
It is very important that this message is clearly transmitted by psychologists to their patients, it is necessary for patients to know that they are the main entrepreneurs and advocates of the changes that are taking place in their lives. As psychologists, we only help achieve the proposed well-being, trying to stimulate skills with very specific tools. In addition, it is the patients who implement the strategies and reap the results: they are the ones who have walked to the point where they are today.
To address this problem at the end of therapy, it is generally a good to ask the patient to think about what they have learned or even write a letter to their past self: someone who has asked for psychological help to deal with a problem they have solved or what they have learned to deal with, allowing them to acquire or internalize a different perspective from what they are able to do , using this exercise of consciousness as a valuable aid for possible relapses.
The? Safety mechanisms are the resources the patient must have at their fingertips to deal with possible relapses, ranging from explaining the problem at the start of therapy to normalizing relapses, one more phase of the problem.
At the beginning of any therapeutic process, it is necessary to explore the history and consequences of the problems for which therapy is used, this analysis should include situations or people that facilitate or make the problem appear, but also the emotions that arise.
This data is very important to carry out a personalized and successful treatment, but they are also essential to stop the treatment: they are very important clues linked to possible relapses. Keep in mind that a relapse always occurs in a meaningful context and that the fundamentals of that context are as important as personal foundations when it comes to treating and predicting behaviors. Thus, if we identify the situations in which the problem may arise, we will be better prepared to deal with it.
In-depth knowledge of the problem is not only useful for predicting relapses, but also provides us with the information needed to address it, in this way, by analyzing the problem in a comprehensive and personalized way, we know when it can happen and what. Refusing to use in every situation, being able to teach our patients these “safety mechanisms” will help them overcome all the gaps along the way.
In addition, it is necessary to make the patient understand that he is in control of his problem, so if there is a relapse, he himself can redefine it as a simple fall, the difference between the two terms is outlined by the control we give him. ourselves about the problem that led us to the consultation and the reflections that will arise when the problem reappears.
To better explain it by a simple example: the fact that we skip a diet day does not mean that we have lost all our efforts and all the progress we are making, so we can decide to continue or return to the old customs. In a psychological treatment of a relapse, we can do the same, we can decide to give up or think about progress and let it become a little pitfall along the way.
Finally, another process that makes it difficult to complete a therapeutic process involves the anxiety, fears and difficulties that patients experience when they have undergone a long-lasting therapeutic process, in this case it is not that they are afraid to face a possible relapse of the problem, but they fear a life without psychological supervision: without anyone adjusting or validating their strategies.
This may be because feelings of affection, friendship or even dependence on the patient have been created in relation to their psychologist, so it is appropriate that, if the therapeutic process is extensive, distances are established with the patient: we are not their friends and we will not always be by their side.
This process can be complicated when our patient does not have a good social support network and it turns out that we, as psychologists, have occupied this important place in their social world, in this case, one of the therapeutic objectives?Before facing final. de therapy, it will be a matter of enriching the patient’s social network to the fullest or generating a new network so that they have someone to talk to or share their problems with.
After all, what we mean by discontinuing therapy is that the end is consented to by patients and that it is the result of a satisfactory therapeutic process, for this to happen it is necessary to try to ensure that the patient and psychologists agree with what has been achieved during the sessions and that, in addition, , the patient clearly knows that he can successfully face a life outside of therapy.