Brief therapy is focused, task-driven, and time-limited. My gestalt trainer used to say, “you can do therapy with whatever time is available”. As novice therapists learning our craft, my course mates and I would engage in 20 minute skills practices during workshops; one person taking the part of therapist, one taking the part of client, the others being observers and giving feedback. I was frequently amazed at the depth of work it is possible to do in only 20 minutes!
Traditionally, psychotherapy is a long-term process usually intended to take place over a number of years. However, that is only tradition; there is nothing to say that psychotherapy has to be that way, or that it should.
I usually frame brief therapy as lasting between 6 and 24 sessions. On a weekly basis, that’s anything up to about six months. If you’re not sure how much time you need to look at something, that’s something we’ll be able to scope out in an initial consultation. It’s also something we can alter as we go; if you get to a point where you feel you’ve got what you came for, I’m not going to insist we continue to the originally planned end date!
People tend to choose brief therapy for a variety of reasons:
Time and money. Finances might be stable for the next few months but be unpredictable after that. Or you might have the time now but know you won’t have any time to spare in the near future
Specific, focused aims that don’t run too deep. Some people know exactly what they want to explore or achieve with therapy. For example, ‘I had a difficult break up and I want to get closure’ is a specific, focused aim that could realistically be addressed in brief therapy. ‘I had a difficult relationship and I want to resolve the many wounds and unhappy memories I’ve been left with’, isn’t going to work so well in brief therapy. That said, spending a few weeks mapping out those wounds and unhappy memories, then focusing on a small number of the more representative/important ones might be. It’s simply a matter of asking ‘realistically, how much time do we need to explore this?’.
Testing the water. Some people, especially if they’ve never been in councelling or therapy before, simply don’t know if it’s something they want to commit to. The traditional view of therapy is an on-going weekly appointment that may run to many years. To go straight from ‘I think I might like to see a therapist’ to that kind of commitment can be daunting. When someone voices those kinds of concerns in an initial consultation, I usually suggest a six week trial, at the end of which we can review how things are going. That’s often enough for someone to decide they don’t want therapy after all; or that they’ve actually got what they needed in the six weeks just by being listened to and feeling cared for; or that they want ongoing therapy; or that they’re unsure and would like another six weeks with review; or that they’ve decided on what to explore and want to do it in brief therapy.
Support for a transition or life event. This can also be the focus of ongoing therapy, depending on the nature of the transition or life event. Suppose you’re expecting your first child, and you want to explore the impact of your own upbringing on your attitudes towards parenting; six months of therapy would allow quite an extensive exploration of this territory. Or it’s the run up to your wedding, and family politics is exploding all around you; brief therapy would provide a space for you to make sense of the kinds of changes in family dynamics your marriage entails, and support for making the choices you want. The point being that, in life, we all experience critical periods of transition where something important about us changes. It is very common for ongoing therapy to deal with the long-term impact of these transitions having been a source of suffering; things didn’t go smoothly, or there wasn’t enough support available for what was a difficult experience. Brief therapy can be a preventative measure when you know that an important transition is coming up, and that it will be difficult, and that you don’t have enough support. Generally speaking, brief therapy would be best suited to transitions that have a clear timespan of a few months. When the timespan is unclear, or likely to be much longer than a few months, then ongoing therapy becomes more appropriate.
Because that’s what you want. I don’t view brief therapy as a compromise, second best way of doing therapy; it is a valuable therapy format in its own right. Some people want to go into therapy to explore themselves and get a better idea of how they tick. And they know at the outset that they want to do that for a short amount of time, not stay in therapy for years. And that’s great!
Hopefully, this has given you a good idea of how relevant brief therapy might be for you. If you feel brief therapy might be suitable for what you need, or even if you still don’t know and want to work it out, then contact me to arrange an initial consultation.
(return to homepage: gestalt therapy bristol)
