How to Make Your Psychotherapy Sessions a Part of Your Life Between Sessions

In an earlier article, Getting the Most Out of Your Psychotherapy Sessions, I addressed certain issues related to starting therapy, including: different types of therapy, how to choose a psychotherapist, ethical issues in therapy, and so on.  In this article, I'm expanding upon a topic that I began discussing in that article and a subsequent article, which is how to make your psychotherapy sessions a part of your life between sessions.

How to Make Your Psychotherapy Sessions a Part of Your Life Between Sessions

What Comes Up in a Psychotherapy Session Doesn't End When You Walk Out of Your Therapist's Office
Psychotherapy is a process.  It's not like taking a pill to make your headache go away.  Things unfold over time.

Many psychotherapy clients, especially clients who are new to therapy, leave their psychotherapist's office at the end of the session and immediately divert their attention to something else.   As a result, they become distracted and forget what they discussed in their session.

When clients forget what was discussed in their therapy sessions, the therapy sessions are relegated to a specific time and place rather than being a part of the rest of their life.  They leave behind whatever "pearls" they gained in therapy, and they will probably need to go over the same material again and again to remember those "pearls."

While I understand that people are busy these days, I recommend that clients take time after each session to reflect on what came up in session and any thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams or daydreams that might come up as a result of the session.

One way to keep your therapy sessions alive and to integrate it into the rest of your life is to write in a journal soon after the session is over.

This doesn't have to be a time-consuming process and the journal entries don't need to be long.

How to Make Your Psychotherapy Sessions a Part of Your Life Between Sessions

Writing After Your Therapy Sessions:

• Enables You to Reflect on Your Session:  A therapy hour is a relatively short period of time as compared with the rest of your life, especially if you're attending therapy once a week.  It's easy to lose awareness of whatever you gained in that session if you don't take the time to reflect on it and write it down.  There might also be things that come up for you between sessions--a memory, a dream, a question about what your therapist said, something you didn't understand or something that bothered in you in the session (see my article: How to Talk to Your Psychotherapist About Something That's Bothering You in Therapy).  If you don't write these things down, you're likely to forget them.

• Creates an Increased Awareness of How You're Changing (or Not Changing):  When you spend time reflecting on and writing about your therapy sessions, you can develop an increased awareness of how you're changing (or not changing) in therapy over time.  This doesn't mean that you can expect big transformations in only a few sessions but, over time, you would benefit from assessing your progress in therapy.

• Enables You to See Where You Might Be Creating Obstacles For Yourself: It's common that when people come to therapy because they want to make changes in their life, they experience a certain amount of ambivalence about making those changes.  Change can be challenging, even if people really want it--especially if people really want it because there's more at stake.  Due to their fear of change, many clients often unconsciously create obstacles for themselves in therapy and in other areas of their life.  By capturing thoughts and feelings in a journal, clients can see over time if they're repeating certain self defeating patterns that are getting in the way of their psychological growth (see my article: Making Changes: Are You Creating Obstacles For Yourself in Therapy Without Even Realizing It?).

• Allows You to Take Your Share of the Responsibility For Your Therapy:  As I mentioned in an earlier article, psychotherapy is a co-created process between the client and the therapist.  There are certain parts of therapy that your therapist is responsible for including providing an emotionally safe environment for you to open up in therapy (see my article: How Psychotherapists Create a "Holding Environment" in Therapy).  But there are also aspects of your therapy are your responsibility. As mentioned above, if you're creating obstacles for yourself by not doing your part in therapy, like doing homework between sessions (if your therapist gives homework), then you're not taking responsibility for your part in therapy.  If you're keeping a journal, you can see how often this occurs, own it, discuss with your therapist, and change it.

• Increases Your Awareness of How Your Unconscious Mind Continues the Process :  Even when you don't consciously reflect on your psychotherapy sessions, the work continues to be done between sessions in your unconscious mind.  You might dream or daydream about something you spoke about in therapy or a thought suddenly pops into your mind, not so coincidentally, that is related to a discussion you had with your therapist.  Your dreams, daydreams, thoughts and feelings are important.  They reveal how your unconscious mind is continuing to process the material.  If you don't journal about it, you will have a harder time making these psychological connections.  

• Increases Your Awareness of the Different Parts of Yourself: In an earlier article, I discussed self states as parts of yourself that are constantly shifting. When you spend time writing in your journal between therapy sessions, you can see how the various parts of yourself affect you, which parts come to the surface in different situations and how these parts interact to help or hinder you (see my article: How Your Shifting Self States Affect You For Better or Worse).

• Helps You to Develop Increased Awareness About How Life Around You is Always Changing: There's an old saying by the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, which is "You could not step twice in the same river."  The significance of that quote is that, just as the river is ever flowing and never the same, life is ever changing.  If you take the time to write about it, you will gain a new perspective and appreciation for how life is constantly changing.

Heraclitus: You Cannot Step Twice in the Same River

• Provides You With a Personal Record About Yourself Over Time:  It's easy to forget how you were when you began therapy.  Your therapist can help you to gain insight into how you were at the start of therapy as compared to how you are now.  In addition, if you keep a journal about your experiences in therapy, you will have a personal record about yourself over time.

Conclusion:
As I mentioned earlier, the therapeutic process doesn't end when you walk out of your psychotherapist's office.

You're spending valuable time and money for your therapy sessions, so if you want to get the most from your therapy, take the time to reflect on your sessions and write down whatever comes up for you.

By taking the time to keep a journal about your sessions and whatever comes up between sessions, your therapy will become integrated in your life and you will get much more out of your sessions.

Not only will keeping a journal between sessions allow you to be more self reflective and aware of your own psychological process, it will also help you to develop new insights into yourself and the direction you want your therapy and your life to take going forward.

Getting Help in Therapy
Attending psychotherapy is a unique experience (see my article: Psychotherapy: A Unique Intersubjective Experience).

It takes courage to seek help in therapy and to change (see my article: Developing the Courage to Change).

Whether you want to gain psychological insight into yourself, make changes in your life or work through a traumatic experience, working with a skilled psychotherapist can be a life-changing experience (see my articles: (see my article: The Benefits of Psychotherapy and How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

The first step, which is making a phone call to set up a therapy consultation, is usually the hardest step, but it can also be the first step to transforming your life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist (see my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy).

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

The Psychological Benefits of Reading Literature

In a prior article, I began a discussion about how reading literature with complex characters is beneficial to the brain.  In this article, I'll expand on this topic and discuss the potential emotional and psychological benefits of reading literature.

The Psychological Benefits of Reading Literature

Aside from the enjoyment and emotional comfort of reading literature, there can be considerable psychological benefits of reading well-written literature with complex characters.

Developing Psychological Insight
As I mentioned in my prior article, when we read about a character, especially a character that we identify with, who overcomes psychological issues, we can gain insight into our own personal struggles and, possibly, see aspects of our problems in new ways.

We can also gain psychological insight from the characters' missteps and identify with their emotional vulnerabilities.

Developing Empathy
In addition, when we're immersed in well written literature, we often feel empathetic towards the characters and this could help in developing empathy for ourselves and others.

Learning About Other Cultures and Historical Times
By reading about other cultures and historical times, it opens us up beyond our own circumscribed lives.

As they open up a new world for us, literature offers us the possibility of new ways of thinking and feeling.  Literature can also give us a perspective about how history affects us now.

Developing a Sense of Curiosity
Being exposed to new ways of thinking and feeling can help to develop a greater sense of curiosity and psychological-mindedness.

Seeing conflicts and emotional dilemmas in a new light can shed light on our own problems and challenge habitual ways of thinking.

There are many examples in literature that provide the psychological benefits that I've discussed above.

Let's take a look at two authors, who are famous for providing stories with psychological depth, Jane Austen and Marcel Proust.

Jane Austen's Books
From Jane Austen's books, including  Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park, we can learn about what it means to get to know yourself as you mature, and to realize that you might not be the person who you thought you were, and the people that you thought you knew can be quite different from who you thought they were.

Jane Austen's Historical Home

We learn how to take the perspective of seeing ourselves through someone else's eyes.

In Sense and Sensibility, two sisters, who have different ways of relating and responding to their worlds, learn from each other, over time, which helps each of them to gain self understanding as well as a new perspective about others.

There are many lessons to be learned from her books about family relationships and romantic relationships.

Austen also gives us guidance in how to live ethically under unethical or corrupt circumstances.

Marcel Proust: In Search of Lost Time
Let's look at some examples from another book that is considered a classic, In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust:

As a young Frenchman, the protagonist falls in love with Albertine, whom he first sees at a beach resort called Balbec, which was modeled after the resort town of Cabourg in France.

In Search of Lost Time: Balbec (Cabourg, France)

Initially, he is obsessed with her and her friends and tries to find ways to meet them.

After he begins a relationship with Albertine and she moves in with him in Paris, he is torn with ambivalence as to whether he wants to remain in the relationship or he wants to end it.

While she is awake, he is tormented with jealousy and suspicion, and he wants to end it, but when she is asleep, all the love and tender feelings that he has for her arise in him again, and he wants to remain in the relationship.

As most people know from their own experiences, being in love often involves ambivalence as well as irrational behavior, including irrational jealousy where there is no objective reason to be jealous.

The protagonist wants Albertine to love him more, but how he goes about trying to increase her passion for him (by being dismissive and rejecting her) has the opposite effect.

Rather than serving to increase her passion, his emotional distance and rejecting nature serve only to alienate her and she eventually gets fed up and leaves him.

After she leaves, he realizes that he made a terrible mistake and, after a few false starts, he eventually writes to her offering to do anything to get her back.

The story goes on with many twists and turns.

Reading this part of the story, many people could identify with the protagonist's ambivalence and his irrational behavior, including believing that a "cold shoulder" towards a loved one would make the loved one even more passionate to pursue the relationship.

No doubt sometimes giving a lover a "cold shoulder" might work temporarily, but it often backfires in the end (if it works at all), as many people who do this realize when they're thinking more clearly.

In addition to the psychological insights about romantic relationships and friendships, Proust gives many other examples where people use psychological defense mechanisms, including denial, to cope with difficult situations.

As an example, Charles Swann, who is in love with Odette and wants to pursue a relationship with her, receives an anonymous warning letter about Odette's personal history of having many sexual affairs with rich. The letter also reveals that she worked as a sex worker.  At the time, during the Belle Epoque, this would have been scandalous and detrimental for Swann's reputation.

In Search of Lost Time: Swann In Love With Odette

Swann is intelligent and has a momentary insight that Odette is only interested in him for his money, but he is also somewhat naive.

With an unconscious gesture of wiping his glasses clean, which is a metaphor for his defense mechanism of not wanting to see, he ignores the warning signs. Instead, he pursues the relationship to his detriment.

Rather than giving a lengthy explanation about Swann's unconscious choice of ignoring his insights and the warning letter, Proust shows Swann making the a small unconscious gesture of wiping his glasses clean.  From this small unconscious gesture, the reader can see what Swann refuses to see the problems involved with this relationship.

Many people could identify with Charles Swann and remember times when they ignored internal and external warnings by pursuing a relationship fraught with problems because this is a common mistake that many people make when they fall in love.

As another example, many of the characters are either part of the aristocracy or part of the bourgeoisie in Paris.  Madame Verdurin, who is a bourgeois Bohemian hostess, has social gatherings with her "little clan" of acquaintances, including artists and musicians.

Proust, who is an astute observer of interpersonal relationships and who used composites of people that he knew in his book, provides us with a humorous description of Madame Verdurin, who outwardly professes a disdain for aristocrats by calling them "bores" and professing that she would never attend one of their social events.

Despite what she says, everything else about her, her gestures, her looks, her demeanor, says how much she really longs to be accepted by French aristocracy, who reject her early on in the story.

During that same time period, Sigmund Freud was writing about how unconscious thoughts manifest, despite what the conscious mind might believe.  Similarly, In Search of Lost Time, Proust gives us rich descriptions of the unconscious thoughts and motivations of his characters, including the narrator, Monsieur Swann and Madame Verdurin.

Sigmund Freud and the Unconscious Mind

Reading about the unconscious thoughts and motivations of the characters in the story, you can't help but recognize yourself and others, if not in exactly the same situation, then in other situations where denial was used as a psychological defense mechanism.

In Search of Lost Time is about many things, including an aspiring writer's struggle to develop confidence in himself and in his writing, how unconscious memories are aroused by certain sensory experiences, the passage of time, how people and places change over time, and how our perspective about life and relationships can also change over time.

While reading literature with complex characters, a reader can have psychological insights might come to the reader as epiphanies about him or herself.  

Other times, it will come as a recognition that the reader is similar to a character in the book. 

It might also come as a relief that these psychological phenomena are common to other people and not just to the reader.

About Me
I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.