What Is Therapy? One estimate is that there are more than 200 forms of psychotherapy in North America today. If you could ask any or all of the therapists practicing these forms "What is therapy?" you'd probably get a huge variety of answers revolving around the ideas of personal empowerment and personal growth. Psychotherapy is a treatment of emotional distress with techniques that rely on verbal and emotional communication. But psychotherapy is not like giving or getting advice. Most importantly it is conducted by a psychotherapist who is trained to not give advice but rather assist the client in solving the underlying issue. This can be done because most forms of psychotherapy are guided by a theory or a model about the psyche and the methods needed to solve problems within that framework. Because communication is the vehicle of healing in most forms of psychotherapy, the relationship between the therapist and client is important. In fact in many forms of psychotherapy such as Transactional Analysis, the therapist's personality is deliberately used to achieve therapeutic ends. So here's what a session might be like: Your therapist and you sit in chairs or on mats facing each other. The therapist asks what you want to change about yourself today, or sets an agenda for the session. You describe a situation that is troubling for you. Ideally you include your feelings, and even better you experience them and share them in the moment. The therapist responds in the manner appropriate to the form of therapy he/she practices and your contract for change or therapeutic goals; but the response would probably be one of: asking a question, empathy, confronting, or no expression. You'd respond in turn, and the process would continue. The basic idea in many forms of psychotherapy is that at some point in the process you'd gain an insight into how and why you got yourself into the place you are. We call that moment of epiphany an "ah ha". And it's not just the chronology of how you got there, but the underlying patterns that determined it. For example: "Ah ha I'm attracted to this type of person in order to prove I'm OK to the father in my head." Usually, emotional distress is relieved by expressing the emotion and therapists are trained in ways to assist you in doing that safely. So a session or series of sessions might be devoted to this. Learning your unique patterns of how you get yourself into emotional distress might be worthy of several sessions. For example, observing your thoughts and behaviors over the course of several weeks will reveal how you create your world. Then the two of you will develop strategies for preventing similar future patterns. The point of it all is to get you in charge of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in whatever area you've contracted for or set as goals. Stages of Therapy: Personal change usually involves several phases or stages. Pre-contemplation is the phase when a person doesn't quite recognize any reason to change. The person might experience an issue and be aware of it; however has no motivating reason to change. We often see this phase typified by blaming. Since it's someone else's fault the person has no reason to change. The Contemplation phase begins when the person begins to think about the issue and the possibility of doing something about it. This phase is when the person also ponders the consequences of change; so it's like an internal dialogue "to change or not - that is the question." When the person actually resolves to engage in a change process he or she has entered the Preparation phase. This stage includes the first meeting with a therapist and any subsequent meetings to establish a therapeutic contract and goals. The Action phase includes the bulk of the change process both in sessions with the therapist and doing "missions" or "homework". Once the therapeutic contract has been fulfilled, the person enters a Maintenance phase. This is when sessions with the therapist are scheduled for support in maintaining the change, or to engage in spot contracts to resolve short term or temporary corollary issues. The Termination phase of therapy is marked by a recognition by the client that change has been achieved and self support is stable.