Therapy Insights Blog – David McPhee, PhD- Get the Most From Your Therapy

David McPhee's Blog

Answers to real therapy questions, informed by 30+ years of clinical practice.

Is family therapy pointless if one member won’t speak?

Showing up is participation, even if the person is silent, and if it’s family therapy, the silence and how the group handles it, tells a ton about what’s going on in the family.

As a therapist, do you follow a manual or adapt to the individual? Why?

Of course a talented, intuitive, highly creative master therapist is wonderful, but one of those may not be available. But a therapist who has a good heart and common sense and only a couple of tools in the bag can do very well too in most cases.

Will a therapist be disappointed if a client skips homework?

Your therapist is not your high school chemistry teacher. If her response to your not doing your assigned homework is “disappointment,” you’ve got a confused therapist.

How can a therapist understand an experience they haven’t been through?

Fact is, having had exactly the same experience can be a disadvantage in psychotherapy. You could keep mentally comparing your bad car accident and your feelings with their bad car accident and their feelings, or work extra hard not to.

What topics are off limits in therapy sessions?

If your therapist prefers not to discuss something, they’ll gently steer the conversation in a different direction; we’re pretty good at that.

Do therapists ask a lot of questions?

Most good therapists avoid questions, most of the time. Questions take over the conversation. "Talk about what I want to hear about, please." They’re a little too bossy, most of the time, though once in a while they can be illuminating.

Are couples therapists supposed to be neutral at all times?

In family or couples therapy or group therapy, I’m constantly supporting one or another person in saying what they need to say from one moment to the next, coaching, affirming, questioning, and reframing.

Can you interview a therapist before you pick them?

If you ask good, relevant questions, you’ll learn plenty and probably get a good feel for how it would be to work with this person.

How can you tell if a therapist is not good at therapy?

Reading Quora questions and answers—stories of therapist misbehavior, misconduct, and mediocrity—has been sobering and saddening, and sometimes just makes me mad. Here’s a short list of problems that come up often.

How do you cope with anxiety that turns into dissociation?

The dissociative state is a way of coping, and may feel a lot better than the anxiety. Some people keep dissociating but learn to do it in a way that’s hardly noticeable.

David McPhee's Blog

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