1First, make sure you attend all scheduled sessions. Missing sessions is like missing a dose of antibiotics when you have an infection. Missing sessions lets the negative emotional, behavioral, or relationship patterns come back. Once every week or two while treatment is under way, you will need to delegate other responsibilities for an hour or so.

2 Second, be open about your life and about your feelings during sessions. Here is a story that will help illustrate the importance of opening up about your life. A couple attended therapy for help with their sex life. They did not make much progress and stopped attending after a few weeks. Two years later one of the partners went to another therapist for her own counseling saying she and her partner broke up a few months after their previous couples therapy. She also revealed something neither one admitted when they’d previously gone to the other therapist together–that she and her partner both had drinking problems the whole time they were together. That information, if it hadn’t been kept from the first therapist, would have drastically changed the course of therapy for the couple.  And maybe the outcome.

In addition to being open about your life, it’s also important to be open about your feelings during sessions. Sometimes we hear about a client who dropped out of treatment because he/she didn’t like something the therapist said. People who do this often don’t discuss with the therapist their reaction to what was said–they just stop attending. Since therapists are not in the business of offending people, it is very likely it was a simple misunderstanding that could have been cleared up with a little dialogue.