Every day I see clients in my office who suffer from depression, anxiety, insomnia, stress or various personality disorders. I work with each of them for one hour a week, which is extremely intense, but not enough to bring about healing changes with positive effects in a short time, to end the client's suffering as quickly as possible. To continue at home the therapeutic process started in the office, clients are given various homework assignments tailored to their needs and the resources they have at that moment.
When I give a client an assignment, I present it, I help him/her to understand why I have chosen that assignment, and what effects it has on his/her mind and life, i.e. each assignment is preceded by a stage of information, psychoeducation. After that, the assignment is accompanied by application recommendations, answering questions such as "How?", "What?", "When?", depending on its specificity. Nothing is left to chance. What the client does at home between two therapy sessions, following the assignment and the application recommendations, is called assisted self-therapy. The client becomes his or her healer by applying the therapist's recommendations prescribed in the office.
Gradually, I have expanded assisted self-therapy, building a therapeutic plan and a protocol with the help of which a person can generate changes, and improve the condition, working alone what I do with a client in the office. The self-therapy program follows an integral therapeutic process, namely the identification of the problem, the causes that generate it, psychoeducation, and recommendation of strategies, techniques, and exercises, all applied gradually depending on the specifics of the problem, the person's resources, but being aware and taking into account the blockages and resistance that may dominate him/her.
The self-therapy program implies that a person in psychological distress is given a therapeutic plan and protocol by a psychotherapist, follows it step by step and applies it on their own from the comfort and safety of their own home. The program is structured taking into account the way the brain and psyche work and how each disorder affects this functioning.
- Self-therapy is an effective tool in healing or halting the progression of disorders that may affect a person's optimal functioning at a particular time. It is useful to categorize this tool to understand its usefulness, but also its limitations, as follows:
- Healing begins with awareness of the problem and the suffering. The person realizes that something is happening to him or her, that he or she is having difficulty functioning, that he or she is constantly feeling unwell, that his or her performance is impaired, and that his or her relationships are being altered. Awareness activates the need to "know what is going on". The person buys books, watches podcasts, attends a personal development course and talks to those around them.
- Stage two involves activating the need to “solve” the problem. By reading, by listening, a person may understand, in broad terms, what they need to do to get out of the situation they are in, but realize that they cannot do it, that no matter what they try, the situation does not get fixed. This is where self-therapy can come in, guiding, step by step, eliminating resistance and activating blocked resources, making the impossible possible, using psychoeducation and psychotherapeutic strategies specific to each disorder. The sooner self-therapy begins after the moment of awareness, the more effective it is and the less effort and personal resources it requires invested.
- When the intensity of the disorder is very high, psychotherapy is the only solution, using self-therapy as a tool to guarantee the continuity of therapy beyond the office.
- When the mental disorder comes with a major impairment of the person's functioning by incapacitating him/her, the solution is the tandem of psychotherapy - psychiatric treatment over a long period.
- Self-therapy does not replace individual or group psychotherapy but is an effective alternative in the case of working with disorders of relatively low intensity, which require interventions precisely so that they do not worsen and dramatically affect the quality of life.
Mild or moderate depression, moderate anxiety and some of the phobias associated with it, stress and insomnia can be cured with the help of self-therapy. In the case of major depression and deep anxiety, self-therapy is useful for reducing the effects of the symptoms, but individual psychotherapy remains the only real solution.
In personality disorders such as paranoid, schizoid or schizotypal, borderline, histrionic or narcissistic personality disorders, self-therapy is only effective as part of individual psychotherapy. Dedicated self-therapy programs can improve symptoms associated with these disorders such as cultivating empathy and assertiveness, unblocking and managing positive emotions, mental restructuring, stress resilience training or developing social skills.
Protect yourself and your loved ones by transforming self-therapy into a tool of mental hygiene, balancing, part of the routine associated with maintaining or restoring mental health, which is directly responsible for your well-being, the quality of your performance and the health of your relationships.
See self-therapy programs developed within the Aidoma Institute:
https://www.aidoma.com/courses-trp.html
