From my conversation with Barry Fell, LCSW, you’ll learn how to get the most out of therapy, how to choose the right therapist and how to know if therapy is right for you. Barry and I discuss how to maximize the benefits of therapy. We cover practical tips, including the importance of setting clear goals, the therapeutic relationship, and the balance between insight and action. We talk about how clients can be proactive, such as bringing a journal to sessions, and the significance of discomfort as a sign of growth. The discussion also highlights the importance of evidence-based frameworks in therapy and how to measure progress effectively.
The following is the transcript of our conversation.
How to Get the Most Out of Therapy
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Hey everyone, today we’re going to be talking about how to get the most out of therapy. Now, y’all know therapy can be really expensive and time-consuming, but it can also be so beneficial. Like it can be life-changing. It can save lives, help make you happier and healthier. So how do you get the most out of therapy? How do you make sure that you’re not wasting your time with a therapist who’s a poor fit or just a system that’s not helpful for you? So today I’ve invited the amazing Barry Fell, who’s a therapist and an author to talk about how to get the most out of therapy. We’ve got six amazing life-changing tips for you today. So let’s jump in. Okay, Barry. So how do we get the most out of therapy?
Do You Need Therapy? 4 Signs It Might Be Time
Barry Fell, LCSW
Well, as you mentioned, therapy is becoming very expensive and it’s also become very popular, it’s become very mainstream. It’s not uncommon for you to be even shopping in the grocery store and for someone to say, I actually heard this, the woman in front of me, as she was checking out, she looked at her significant other and said, “I’ve got to get to my therapy session in 20 minutes.” And she said it so openly and I thought, that’s such a brilliant thing. Therapy surely come out of obscurity and darkness. And you know, I think it’s also very cliche for us to…
prescribe therapy to friends and family. How many times have you said when speaking of a friend, they need therapy? And that’s just become so cliche. And I think it begs the question, well, what does qualify someone for therapy? So I think that’s where we should start today. When we ask what can make therapy a waste of time, I think the first question to answer is, well, how can you qualify for therapy? What is the difference between talking to a friend and talking to a therapist? And when should you talk to a therapist versus talk to a family member or a friend. And there are four things that you can measure against that might justify some type of professional mental health service. And the first one would be chronic distress. Distress is common in life. We all experience distress. We’ve all got different thresholds when it comes to managing distress. And sometimes our thresholds get breached and we need extra support because our strategy is often not the stressor that’s the issue. It’s how we respond to the distressor that can become the problem. We can either be adaptive, meaning we can manage distresses in a way that works, or maladaptive. Our strategy isn’t working, it’s making things worse. But if you’re experiencing chronic distress, then mental health counseling can be beneficial to learn how to navigate that effectively. The second thing I would say is psychiatric symptoms. If you’re experiencing psychiatric symptoms which are getting in the way, I think psychiatric symptoms are pretty common to most of us, but the question is, are they getting in the way for you personally? The third qualifier would be, are you experiencing distressing thoughts? Thoughts that seem to be out of your control, thoughts that seem to be intrusive that seem to hijack your brain. Thoughts are often out of our control, but again, the question is, do we respond to them in a healthy, effective way? And if the answer’s no, then again, mental health service could be very beneficial. Counseling therapy could be really helpful. And then the last qualifier would say is unresolved trauma. Trauma at some time in life is going to happen. And if it hasn’t happened yet, just wait, it’s coming. Again, the question is, how are we reacting to that traumatic event? How are we making sense of it? How is it impacting our worldview? Unresolved trauma often comes out in many different ways. There’s a book out right now, The Body Keeps Score. If you are not managing a traumatic event, then it’s going to leak out physiologically, mentally, emotionally, even behaviorally. It can trigger addictive patterns.
So if that is happening, then something at the root needs to be addressed, which is often that unresolved trauma. Now, that’s what I think would qualify you for therapy.
How to Do Therapy: The 3 C's
Barry Fell, LCSW
How do you make use of therapy? Well, I’m going to share a quick formula with you, which I think is game-changing when it comes to being a client in mental health services. I call it simply the three C’s.
The First C of Therapy: A Clear Landing Point
C number one, when you go into therapy, work out with your therapist a very clear landing point.
Where are you trying to get to? And every therapy session should start with a reminder as to why am I here? What got me here? But most importantly, where am I trying to get to? Where is the clear point of arrival?
Emma McAdam, LMFT
This is like so important because I think a lot of people think, and even some therapists act this way, like the purpose of therapy is to just go and talk and just talk and just be supported and that’s fine like that’s okay but if your time or money is an issue then having goals can actually make therapy a lot more efficient.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Yes, exactly. There are two types of therapy. There’s emote therapy and then there’s goal-oriented therapy. Emote therapy doesn’t have a point of arrival and there is a time and a space for therapy just to be a safe place to work through the week. And there are plenty of people who access therapy in that way.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Right, there’s nothing wrong with just wanting to go talk with a therapist and just air things out. But if time or money is an issue, like that might not be the most use of those things. Most of us can’t afford therapy.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Which it is for most of us. We don’t have deep pockets and therapy needs a beginning, a middle and an end. So to have a clear point of arrival and then reverse engineer the second C.
The Second C of Therapy: Concrete Steps to Take
Barry Fell, LCSW
What are the concrete steps that I need to take that gets me to that clear point of arrival? What goals should I establish? What skills do I lack? And what do I need to develop, what skills adaptive skills are going to develop to get to that point of arrival.
The Third C of Therapy: Concise Talking Points
And the third C is concise. Make sure when you go to therapy, make sure that the talking points are concise. I look at treatment, any type of treatment like a dart board. And sometimes you throw the dart and you miss the dart board completely, which suggests we’re not being precise or concise enough with the talking points. What you want to do is hit the bullseye, meaning every therapy session counts. Everything that you’re discussing is a concise talking point that gets us to that clear destination.
So clear, meaning clear destination where we’re trying to land, concrete, simple, measurable goals and skills that gets us to that point of arrival and concise. Let’s make sure that the talking points align with the goals and the skills that are required.
How to Do Therapy Tip 1: Goal-Oriented Sessions
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, and there’s some ways to measure this so some therapists are gonna be and this is very common that a lot of therapists are just kind of loose about this like they just want to know what you want to work on and then they work on it in session and then other places are gonna be even more measured about this so the clinic I worked at in grad school we had our clients take an outcome scale like a qualitative measure of how their functioning was every single session and it would just our goal was to see their distress go down over time in a measurable way now I did not do that in outpatient practice, but we did have an outcome scale at one of my treatment centers, where every session we would give our clients a little three question survey that was like, did you work on what you wanted to work on today? Did your therapist actually help you today? And that helped us as therapists become better. Now, don’t necessarily think it’s reasonable to assume a therapist is going to be using those measures unless you’re perhaps in a clinic or working as part of a study or with a really like strict CBT therapist. But knowing your goal, I think, is really, really important.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Absolutely. That which gets measured gets done.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
That’s true.
Barry Fell, LCSW
And I feel a weight of responsibility when I’m measuring symptoms and signs, psychiatric signs and symptoms. And when I’m measuring adaptive skills versus bad habits in every session, then it puts a weight of responsibility on me to make sure that this session moves the needle. And it actually helps me as the therapist to remind me of this is the focal point. Therapy should have a concise nature. It shouldn’t just be always client-oriented, where you go where the client takes you because sometimes the client actually can take you down a rabbit hole unintentionally.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s one of the things I really liked about your book. Like one of my takeaways from your book was one of the easiest ways to waste time in a therapy session is for the therapist to say, how was your week? And then the client to spend 30 minutes, 35 minutes of the 50 minute session be like, well, here’s what happened this week. And then the last 10 minutes be like, wait, wait, wait, I got to tell you about like what I’m actually wanting to work on. And all of sudden your sessions like practically over. And this can be something that the client does because they’re kind of trying to avoid something that’s uncomfortable and they just want to chat, but it can also be something the therapist isn’t super mindful of. So in my opinion, one of the better ways to start a session is what do you want to work on today? Yeah. What do you want to work on today?
Barry Fell, LCSW
Yeah, I love that. I love that.
How to Do Therapy Tip 2: The Therapeutic Relationship
Emma McAdam, LMFT
So I’m going to jump in with my first big idea, which is that the therapeutic relationship is the biggest indicator for success. [Lambert’s Pie Chart (also known as the Common Factors Model) is based on the research of Michael J. Lambert. It summarizes] what makes therapy work? They’ve done a lot of studies on this and 40% of the outcome of therapy, like whether you’re able to achieve your goals is dependent on things that have to do with what’s going on in the life of the client. So whether you have resources, whether there’s a lot of stressors going on, whether you’re willing to try new things or you know, what’s going on in the client’s life. And then this is what the therapist can influence, what the therapy process can influence. And you might think like the amazing skills of the therapist are really what make the biggest factor and it’s actually the therapeutic relationship. So from what the therapist can control, 30% of the outcome of therapy is dependent on your relationship with your therapist. 15% is hope and expectancy. Some people call this the placebo effect. I prefer hope because it’s like I hope good things will come into my life. You start looking for those good things. You start acting in a hopeful way, good things come, and 15% is the actual skills of the therapist, the techniques or interventions that they’re using and teaching.
So what does a good like therapist fit look like? I would say there’s a difference between feeling comfortable and feeling safe, and I want you to feel safe with your therapist, but I wouldn’t necessarily want you to think that therapy is always going to feel comfortable.
So you want a therapist who does not creep you out. You want a therapist where you feel comfortable sharing with them. You feel like they care about you. You feel like they’re paying attention. They aren’t falling asleep in session or eating in session, but a good therapist is also going to expect more out of you and challenge what you say. One of the pitfalls I see with therapy is that sometimes therapists are like, yeah, you poor thing. Yes, everyone is out to get you. And they just validate and validate and validate when they don’t have all the perspectives or they aren’t pushing to help you question like, what might be your role in this problem? So a good therapeutic relationship is gonna look like simultaneously helping you feel safe while helping you feel challenged and I think that’s really important.
How to Do Therapy Tip 3: Work Within a Framework
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Alright Barry what’s your next tip?
Barry Fell, LCSW
Well, I’m going to build upon what you just said. I think it’s really important. You know, there’s a cliche there’s no growth in the comfort zone. There’s no comfort in the growth zone. And I love the way you put that. You do need to feel safe, but therapy isn’t always a comfortable venture. In fact, you need to feel stretched. You need to feel challenged. And what does that look like? Sometimes it’s about the therapist putting you in positions and situations that typically you would avoid. Sometimes it’s about challenging your worldview and your perspective because we don’t see the world as it is; we see the world as we are and we bring all types of biases into the way we see the world and sometimes we need a fresh perspective someone to say you know what let’s look at that situation and you. Recently actually I had a client approach me in my clinic and said therapy’s not working and I said okay well what’s going on I knew the therapist, very capable therapist and what it came down to was I don’t feel like I’m being challenged. What this person said was, “I’m trying to figure out what is the difference between me talking to this therapist and me talking to my mother.”
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, that’s a good question.
Barry Fell, LCSW
I could be talking to my mother about the same things. My mother gives me very similar responses to what the therapist gives me, so why am I paying good money to talk to a therapist? And as I dug into it, what I realized was that the therapist didn’t have a solid framework for this particular client. When I asked the therapist, okay, well, tell me about the framework that you’re using to help this person. They couldn’t give me a clear, concise answer, which made me realize we’re just talking in circles right now. You need a framework. The framework should have that beginning, middle, and end. And within that framework is the therapeutic tension. So if I can give a quick example, I’m currently working with a client who is avoidant. They don’t do hard. They don’t like to stress, anytime they feel distress, they fold. I would suggest they fold too quickly. The therapy again, isn’t about the stresses. It’s about how they’re responding to the stresses. So I’m using a framework called exposure and response prevention therapy. And I have to remind myself every time I go into a session oh with this client, I know what model I’m using. Now exposure and response prevention therapy basically means I’m going to have this person turn about and lean into and walk towards the thing they typically avoid. And with this young person it happens to be the classroom environment, he struggles socially, he struggles academically with content and volume, and his strategy is to avoid class. He hangs out in the bathrooms, he’s tardy, he doesn’t complete his assignments, so what I’m having him do is actually learn to sit in class 10 minutes longer than he typically would.
And I’m teaching him strategies that would help him regulate and simple strategies like box breathing, deep breathing, being grounded, being present, being centered. Now that might sound simple as I say it, but it is difficult for him. It’s a nightmare for him to be grounded, centered, and present. He doesn’t want to listen to what the teacher’s saying. He wants to avoid at all costs. So I bring this example up because my job is to make this person walk towards the distressor in such a way that it doesn’t get in the way, which takes time. It’s a process, it’s not an event. My job isn’t to sit in my office with him and make him feel comfortable and help him understand that, well, I get why you’re doing what you’re doing. This is a distressing situation. This will be distressing for a lot of people. Validation’s important. Affirming him is important, but I’ve got to be careful that I don’t enable him in these maladaptive strategies.
I’ve got to point out that the problem isn’t the problem. The real problem is the way you are reacting to this distressing situation, that isn’t working. That’s just compounding life’s challenges for you. So yes, there ought to be what we would call in the field, therapeutic tension, a healthy dose of discomfort that serves as a driver for change.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
I love that and when you say frameworks you mean like therapeutic models and I would hope those are evidence-based models.
Barry Fell, LCSW
What does that mean, evidence-based?
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, so it means there’s been research done, multiple studies, high-quality studies, randomized controlled trials showing that this approach to therapy or this approach to change or this treatment option or intervention actually helps with the problem that you’re facing. If you look, therapists have lots of different modalities and to get a good therapist fit, you probably want to know what their modality is. Yes. So for example, there’s CBT, that’s like a little bit more old school, but still very relevant as very highly like evidence based.
And then there’s like somatic approaches to therapy. There’s EMDR. There’s EFT, emotion focused therapy for marriage therapy and other types of couples work and relationship work. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Most people don’t know this. There’s like 500 approaches.
Barry Fell, LCSW
There’s that many?
Emma McAdam, LMFT
There are.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Wow.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah. There’s like 500 therapy models. Yeah. Many of them are not well-known.
Barry Fell, LCSW
I didn’t know that. Do you know what’s interesting Emma? The research says it doesn’t really matter what framework the therapist uses. It’s more important that they actually use a framework. And now I would challenge that a little bit. I think certain frameworks fit certain diagnostic challenges. So if someone’s dealing with anxiety, exposure response prevention therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy is probably the gold standard.
How to Do Therapy Tip 4: Find a Therapist Who Is a Good Fit
Unfortunately, there are too many clinicians with great intentions who just talk in circles and their framework isn’t strong enough. It needs to be strong. So I love what you said to ask the therapist, where is your expertise? What modality do you typically use when offering your service? I think that’s a really important question.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, yeah, and you know for those of you out there who are like how would I even get started finding a therapist? If you go to Psychology Today therapist locator tool, and these are not a sponsor, you can find more about like how to find a good therapist on my website, but at Psychology Today’s therapist locator tool you can actually filter by all kinds of characteristics in a therapist and that includes like what their modality is, like what treatment approach they use, whether they’re male or female, if they take your insurance. So I like I think being an informed consumer of therapy is going to help you get the most out of it.
Barry Fell, LCSW
And another way to be informed in this day and age, you can’t get away with giving a bad service. There’s Yelp, there’s Google, there’s Google reviews. There’s so many reviews out there that will help you understand what other people’s experience has been. I would highlight that what makes a therapist effective is that the outcomes they’ve achieved. Now the skills they have are the means to that end. The skills, the modality that they use is the means to achieving good results.
But I’ve had people believe, this person’s a good therapist because they’ve got a great personality.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
They’re so nice.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Yes, and they’re funny.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
They’re so friendly.
Barry Fell, LCSW
That’s got a short shelf life. Them being funny and humorous, that might add value, but eventually it will run out of steam if there’s no solid framework. There’s therapy the science, which you said earlier were the research-based methods. Therapy the art is when the therapist infuses their personality and charisma into the science.
You need both. If you’re working with a therapist who’s just using therapy, the arts, they’re overly dependent on their personality and charisma to bring about change, that will have a short shelf life and the outcomes will not be as good as you’d want them to be.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
How many therapists do you supervise, maybe is the wrong word, but like direct and work with?
Barry Fell, LCSW
I’ve trained over the last 20 years over 100 therapists.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, so you know what you’re talking about when it comes to like evaluating therapists.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Yes.
How to Do Therapy Tip 5: Bring a Journal
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Okay, that brings me to my second point. This is like the most actionable thing you can do to improve the quality of your therapy and that is to take a notebook or a journal to therapy. Whenever I have a client who shows up to session with a notebook, I’m like this client is gonna make progress and I don’t want them like writing down the whole session, but when you’re in a therapy session, you’re probably more emotional than usual and that means that the thinking part of your brain is less active and the memory encoding part of your brain is less active. So you’re going to be less likely to remember what was said, what your homework was, what you’re learning, or what your therapist said. So if you use this journal in your therapy session to like write down a few notes, write down a few ideas that come to you, or what your therapist said, or your homework, then you’re going to make it so that the next six days you can actually do something like you can, you can go back to it. You can remember and you can practice outside of session. And then even during that week, you could also like jot down ideas in your therapy journal of like, I want to make sure and talk about this in the next session. Cause then when you get there, sometimes people are like, how was your week? I don’t know. Let’s talk about whatever. And then you realize at the end of the session, yeah, I was, wanted to talk about this one thing. So bring a journal or notebook to therapy.
Barry Fell, LCSW
That is a game changer, such a simple suggestion, but a game changer. I can tell the difference between a client who’s actually taking notes throughout the week of the talking points that matter to them or measuring if what we’re talking about is actually working when they come to session it tends to be a far more productive session
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, and it demonstrates this idea of like a growth mindset. Like, okay, I’m depressed. I believe, I hope there’s some skills that I can learn that are gonna help influence my depression for the good. It represents this growth mindset and that’s really the biggest indicator of whether you’re gonna do well in therapy.
How to Do Therapy Tip 6: Balance the "Why" With the "What Now?"
Barry Fell, LCSW
My third and final tip, insider information if you will, that I think will add value to the therapy service is you want to walk away from therapy feeling as though there’s balance between the talking point, why you may behave a certain way or why you might see the world through a certain lens versus what now? And I think the why can be overcooked.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
I think so too, like you hear so many people being like, let’s explore the reason why you’re avoiding going to class. Do you have trauma? Do you have bad experiences? Let’s explore everything that happened and everything your parents said and everything your teacher said that made you avoid class. Like you can talk about the why, but then what?
Barry Fell, LCSW
Exactly. Now, the why is relevant because you don’t want to rinse and repeat the same mistakes and the more self-awareness you have, then the better chance you have for deploying a better strategy in the future. But when it’s therapy session after therapy session, digging into why something is the way it is, sometimes it can go down a very dark rabbit hole and you might walk away from therapy going, that didn’t feel productive because what you really need, I think the essence of good therapy is adaptive strategy building. So the what now? So I’ve now spent 30 % of my time talking about the why. I’ve now gained self-awareness and insight, which can add value. But then the other 70 % of the therapy should be about, what now? How can I navigate this distressor? How can I navigate this worldview in a way that works for me? In a way that psychiatric symptoms don’t surface or in a way that doesn’t get in the way.
So the what now is paramount and I think good therapy should spend, I call it the 30-70 balance. Good therapy, 70 % of it should be balanced, focused on, well the what now? As you walk into the future, we’ve delved into the past to learn from it, but now we’re gonna be future focused. What now? What adaptive strategy is gonna replace the bad habit that tripped you up in the past?
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Oh, totally. I love that. It’s so important too, because on social media, it’s so easy to get into this rabbit hole of like, the reason I am the way I am is because of something in the past. And I really prefer to think of this a little differently. It’s like, oh, something happened in the past. The way you adapted worked for a minute, but it doesn’t work in the long run. And that’s what’s leading to the problems now. So let’s say you avoid things because you didn’t know how to escape them as a kid. We need to learn a new way to adapt and respond to fear or stress in a way that’s actually going to be helpful and so that’s why like what you’re saying is so important.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Yeah, I think sometimes there’s paralysis by analysis. And the truth is you and I could meet with the same client and over a 10-week period your analysis as to why someone’s behaving a certain way could be very different to my analysis.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
That’s true.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Which is to say analysis is not a perfect science.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, that’s true. And how we perceive our reality really impacts our reality. So we have to be careful with that.
Barry Fell, LCSW
And sometimes analysis can keep you stuck in a victim stance.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
That’s right. Yep. So I love this. So what you’re saying is focus on the what now, focus on adaptive skills now because that can actually lead to massive change and improvement.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Yeah.
How to Get the Most Out of Therapy: Discomfort as a Sign of Growth
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Here’s my last one. Okay, I think one of the big hang-ups people have with therapy is they might have a session or even a couple of sessions that leave them feeling worse. So could that still be good therapy?
Barry Fell, LCSW
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean when you rip the bandaid off, it’s typically uncomfortable and painful.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, so I think as long as you have enough trust and safety with your therapist, you have an idea of where they’re going or the goals you’re working towards, and you feel like they’re respectful toward you and they’re skilled at what they’re doing, it’s really normal for therapy to not feel good for a while. It’s really normal for things to feel a little bit more tender or opened up or more anxiety-provoking than they did in the past. And I would say this is part of the process that I would encourage people to be patient with.
That if you have a couple sessions that make you feel worse, don’t decide right away that therapy doesn’t work for you. Be curious, like, I wonder what I can learn through this experience. And a good therapist will not always make you feel good at the end of a session. Symptoms might not go down right away, but they should go down over time. Like there should be like a vision of where we’re going that’s gonna matter. So if you have a couple sessions that feel worse or make you feel worse, I would just say that’s really common, especially when you’re talking about trauma or when you’re talking about emotions that you’ve buried for a while. And I would say that’s part of the process and allow that to be there.
Barry Fell, LCSW
And maybe that discomfort is a sign of growth. Even though it feels terrible or horrible in the moment, it’s often the preliminary sign that good things are on the horizon.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yeah, so how would you measure growth if it’s not comfort?
Barry Fell, LCSW
I would measure growth in three ways. Signs, symptoms, and adaptive skills. So that’s to say, are my psychiatric symptoms decreasing? Symptoms are what we experience, signs are what other people can see in us. So if I’ve got a flat affect, you could see my flat affect and that could be a sign of depression, where if I’ve got self-loathing thoughts, you won’t be able to see that. I can experience it as a symptom. So if my signs and symptoms are decreasing, that’s probably a good sign that therapy is working. And if I’m actually seeing adaptive skills be self-evident, and more importantly, they are working, that’s another good yardstick to measure against. And again, that which gets measured gets done.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
I like that when I think of adaptive skills, I think of flexibility. So Acceptance Commitment Therapy talks about yes flexibility with our thoughts with our behaviors So someone who’s really rigid for example with the school avoidance example. Like the only way he knows how to deal with stress or fear at school is to avoid it. You escape avoid escape. He’s got one skill. So now let’s add in a new skill, which is like, huh? I’m gonna practice deep breathing. I’m gonna talk with my teachers. I’m gonna reach out for support now. He’s got four skills for dealing with anxiety and stress.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Another big one in that example would be I’m actually going to tolerate this distress. That’s right. It’s not going to kill me. To sit there in discomfort is not going to kill me.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Yep, getting better at feeling or willingness to stress tolerance, however you want to describe that, right? So now he’s got five skills. He can still occasionally use avoidance, but now he’s got five skills he can use. And I would hope by the end of a good round of therapy, he’s got a couple really good skills that are helping him. Like maybe he changes how he thinks, like, it’s going to be a catastrophe if anyone asks me to speak up in class. And he uses exposure response prevention. He raises his hand in class. He speaks in class a hundred times over the course of a year and then by the end of the year he’s like actually my thinking around this has changed. If i say something is stupid in class nothing bad really happens if i say something smart in class nothing bad really happens. Right? And learning by experience, his brain rewires.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Yes. Yes
Emma McAdam, LMFT
He’s a more adaptive more flexible skill around that.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Yes, that’s one of the great strengths of Therapy in a Nutshell because what you’ve been able to do is capture a lot of these skills, a lot of the skills that I think clinicians are not even aware of and you’re able to bring them to the forefront and operate from this premise of replacing maladaptive bad habits with new skills and strategies. You’ve made it so concrete, concise, and clear that I know when I’m struggling I certainly watch a lot of your videos. They’ve really helped me.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Thanks, Barry. That’s so kind. And that is my goal, is to help make the skills part more accessible.
Making Therapy a Life Changer
Emma McAdam, LMFT
Hey, tell us about the book you’ve written.
Barry Fell, LCSW
So I wrote this book, Therapy, a Life Changer, a Lifestyle or a Waste of Time, because it can be all three. When we talk about emote therapy, emote therapy is I just need to save space. I need to feel as though I can speak with absolute confidence that there’s going to be confidentiality. I’m going to explore maybe some secrets. I’m going to explore some shameful topics. I’m simply going to explore my week. I’m going to try and make sense of my week. For some, therapy has become a lifestyle, almost like going to the gym or going on a shopping trip. It’s just a part of what you do. Now, there’s some people who couldn’t afford that.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
That’s right.
Barry Fell, LCSW
And I’d be one of those people. For others, they have the opportunity and the privilege to make therapy part of their lifestyle and it’s become very beneficial. You want therapy to be a life changer.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
That’s what I always hope.
Barry Fell, LCSW
And therapy can be a life changer to your point if the consumer is informed as to how to make this work. I don’t think that it should be assumed that because you’re going to therapy, you’re always going to get a good outcome or a good result. Or the therapist knows precisely how to help you. I would go in with a healthy dose of caution, doing good homework, reading reviews, interviewing the therapist so you can have confidence that this person really can help me. The points that we are raising today are really peppered throughout this book with many more points.
So if you’re on the fence going, can therapy help me? Should I go to therapy? Do I qualify for therapy? Am I skeptical of it and what would make it good experience? Then these life-changing tips would help you get off the fence and maybe go forward with confidence because it can be a waste of time.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
And money.
Barry Fell, LCSW
If you don’t know what you’re doing, if you don’t know how to make it a good experience, if you don’t know what’s behind the curtain of therapy and how to measure good therapy as a consumer and a client, then it can absolutely be a waste of time. I think most of the therapists I’ve worked with over the last two decades have all got good intentions. They all want to help. They all want to add value. But I will say there’s a lot of therapists that lean into the art of therapy, personality and charisma over the science of therapy, which is to use frameworks, which are tried and tested and researched. So my hope is that whoever reads this book could get off the fence and move forward with confidence knowing how to make this service value added. That’s the hope. I love it. It’s on Amazon. You can order it off Amazon.
Emma McAdam, LMFT
We’ll pop those links in the description so you can look them up. Cool, thank you so much. Really fun talking with you. And if you guys would like to learn more about how to find a great therapist or how to find a therapist you can afford, you can check out my resources on my website. So thank you all for being here and please take care.
Barry Fell, LCSW
Thank you.
