If you’ve been thinking of seeing a therapist or even want to talk to a therapist online, then you may be wondering just how long it’s going to take you to ‘get better’. Unfortunately, there’s no hard and fast answer for this, as some people have been seeing a licensed therapist for 10 years and still need their therapy sessions, whereas others may have a breakthrough within a couple of weeks.
Traditional therapy and online coaching (also known as web therapy) are completely subjective and depend on the individual issues being addressed and the psychologist themselves. What is a given, however, is that you shouldn’t expect to heal overnight. These things take time, but you should be able to see some sort of progress as early as your first session.
Different therapies mean different timelines
Whether your health insurance is covering face-to-face therapy or you’re getting your insurance to back online therapy, the amount of time you spend in therapy is heavily dependent on what kind of therapy you are seeking.
For example, cognitive behavioural therapy is designed to tackle a specific issue and achieve certain goals. This means that you can set what you want to achieve in a certain amount of time and work towards it. Once you have hit these goals and your symptoms are manageable or completely gone, then you’ll be done with your licensed psychologist. So if you have gone in to get rid of something like panic attacks, once you have learned to find healthy coping mechanisms and stop the attacks, then you will no longer need to go to therapy.
Self-exploratory therapy, on the other hand, is the type of in-depth therapy that could keep you in therapy at a private practice for months or even years. This involves looking through your past and learned behaviors, trying to unpack the meaning behind them, and how you can change your actions and reactions going forward to set you on the right path. There is absolutely no way that you can predict how long this is going to take to achieve.
The problem with traditional therapy
Don’t get me wrong, I take absolutely nothing away from traditional therapy and the amazing work that some therapists do. They are excellent at teen counselling, grief counselling, and everything else in between and I have met some of the most incredible family therapists through my work.
However, when it comes to traditional therapy for trauma, most traditional therapists do not adequate train clients to be stabilized or resourced prior to treatment as most psychotherapists are not trauma-informed. At Naked Recovery, we use an educational coaching approach which empowers clients to take charge of their own trauma recovery by:-
- Understanding how trauma impacts the brain and body
- What positive and grounded resourcing looks like and feels like – how to find approaches which work best
- What sabotage mechanisms look and feel like, so we stop being simply given by that response and choose our response to trauma more proactively
- How to stabilize
- We teach self compassion so the learnings of the trauma can be integrated without imploding on oneself
- What triggers impact our feelings and reactions today and how to manage those triggers in a more effective manner
- Forward-focused approaches to deal with the future in a better way
- Developing structures and plans for the future
Whereas traditional therapy looks backwards, somatic trauma processing with goal-oriented trauma coaching approaches focuses ahead. During a trauma assessment, we will look at your situation and be able to advise if our coaching approach is a fit for your issue or if traditional therapy is more appropriate.
Traditional therapy is expensive, very expensive, and sometimes going deep into ones’ childhood is NOT NECESSARY to cope better with the challenges right in front of you. Then there’s how long it takes. At the end of the day, a therapist is making money from your sessions. Your attendance is how they make a living and as such, it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to have a breakthrough after the first session and send you on your merry way. On average, the minimum amount of time taken for therapy to produce results is between 6 and 8 months, but it usually lasts a lot longer and you could be in therapy for years.
Traditional therapists may be highly qualified, but that doesn’t mean that they are highly specialized in what you need. Trauma coaching or therapy is a niche specialization and it’s not something that many professional therapists have trained extensively in.
Why choose a specialized program?
I created Naked Recovery with its coaching programs for people struggling to get through a particularly traumas. Our programs are educational and focus on developing skills and resources to overcome trauma. We have dissected each trauma to work out its mechanism and edges and we then work together with you in a structured, planned system that helps you to manage all aspects of the trauma: The psychological effects, physical and mental health, finances, and the path towards total healing.
As someone trained in PTSD studies and having gone through many traumas myself, I know how hard it can be to pick yourself up and dust yourself off after a trauma with little to no support. When you decide to join Naked Recovery, you have a host of the best online support options from our Trauma Coaches and Angels, who are there to listen to you and walk you through the next important steps towards success.
If we judge our approach to be a good fit for you, our courses are less expensive than traditional therapy. Our courses have been tried and successfully tested all over the world, from Thailand and New Zealand to South Africa, Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UK, Australia, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Iran and the US. We don’t believe that there should be an open-ended time for getting your life back on track and that actively engaging with your emotions and putting an achievable plan in place is the best way to start putting your best foot forward on the journey to a new you.
Our online courses make Naked Recovery programs accessible to people that may not be able to access health services like health professionals and traditional therapy. This distance therapy means that even those living in the most remote areas or those that are unable to physically make it to a therapist, still get the opportunity to look forward to a bright future.
If you’ve just gone through a trauma and you’re looking for a way to get through the grieving process in a healthy, holistic way then Naked Recovery programs may be the answer. Book a Clarity call to see if the fit works for you.