Maximize Your Therapy Sessions- Part I: Taking Notes and Reviewing them
It takes a while to find a therapist that you think is a good fit… GREAT!
You’re truly investing yourself in psychotherapy, and I want to share with you some tips that maximize your therapy sessions!
Recently I received an email from a former client of mine and he wrote:
“While I was cleaning and packing stuff to move out my apartment, I found an old notebook on the bookshelf in the garage. This notebook is filled with the notes and writings from our therapy sessions years ago. At that time, I used that notebook to write down the information that helped me to manage a difficult time. As I was reading the notes, I was surprised to see that overtime I’ve become more grounded, confident, because I’ve internalized some of the perspectives and positive coping skills we talked about in my counseling sessions. While I was in counseling, I took these notes and went to see them I needed and implemented some ideas to change how I viewed and approached relationships. I’m surprised to see how far I have come by reading the notes taken in my counseling with you.”
Receiving this email from a former client has not only made my day, but also led me to think about taking notes and reviewing them is a great way to maximize your counseling experiences. Several benefits are such as:
Taking notes helps you keep track of the information that your therapist shares with you.
Taking notes helps you capture your “Aha moment(s)”. These Aha moments provide you with a deeper, profound understanding about why you have felt or thought this way. And in turn, it helps you to think, feel, and behave differently than before.
Taking notes helps to enhance your memory—remembering, retaining, and recollecting the important information in the future.
To expand the last point, after taking notes, you can review the notes, pick one goal, plan and break down your goal into a set of small steps and start to work on them. For instance, a wife client talked about her communication style with her husband was quite parental and that she was exhausted as if she has another adult child to manage, and her husband has avoided making major decisions with her. Therefore, we discussed a few concrete and practical ways that she can be more aware of how she talks to her husband differently. She took a note on that one in her journal, wrote down specific ways that she would implement outside couples counseling sessions and practice them.
Taking and reviewing notes help you stay on track of the process and progress of your change(s) over time. The process of change can be a pattern of interacting with others or the dynamics in the relationship as a result of a certain type of communication. The progress of your change(s) lead to positive outcomes. To use the same example of the last point, as the wife worked on decreasing her engagement with her husband as a parent, the changing dynamics as a result of different interactions help the couple to have equal partner’s marital relationship rather than a parent-child one.
Taking and reviewing notes helps you build on what was discussed and the goals you worked on from a previous session and can support you in continuing or building on new perspectives or details in the next session.
Taking and reviewing notes helps you to revisit these notes, days, months, or years later when you are in need of coping strategies, or review what you have managed to cope with similar situations or issues. These notes serve as a mini “refresher” course, or they give you a sense of empowerment and confidence to show you how far you’ve come when you look back at your notes.
There is no right way that you want to take notes during the sessions, or to write them down soon after your therapy sessions. Taking and reviewing therapy notes provides a myriad of benefits that maximize your therapy experiences.