Cornel Verwey  •  Clinical Psychologist

What does the process of therapy look like?

This is a brief introduction to therapy, how we might work together and what you might expect from therapy in order to make it enriching and helpful for yourself. Therapy tends to evolve in a number of phases, an understanding of which may help you to get more out of the process. Often, it begins with a phase of evaluation, where we will get to know one another and how we might best spend our time together. Then, in the therapeutic phase we will work towards some of the goals that we identified in the evaluation phase. It is important to understand that, while therapy can bring about personal growth in the long-term, it can be unsettling in the short-term. Successful therapy can also have unsettling consequences for people with whom you have close relationships. Because therapy is about change, others may struggle with the changes that you choose to make. Therapy will probably work better for you if you feel free to discuss any difficulties that you may have in the process of therapy, either with regard to the therapy itself or the content of what we discuss. Therapy can sometimes evoke strong emotions. For this reason, it is important that you feel entirely comfortable to speak about any dilemmas or difficulties you may have at any time during our work together. You or I may at any time consider that it is better to end therapy, for any number of reasons. Please raise this if you feel that it may be better to end therapy, so that we can draw it to a close in a way that allows you to get as much out of the process as possible.