Therapy is like refurbishing the House of your Dreams
Comparing Integrative Psychotherapy to refurbishing the house of your dreams may be an analogy that is helpful to you.
Imagine that you have moved into the house of your dreams but it needs some refurbishment.
You walk into the kitchen and notice that you need new appliances and the floor needs be done.
In the living room you need a new sofa, armchairs, a television, plants and you want to put some nice wallpaper up. But which one?
The floorboards in the bedroom are creaking and you definitely need a new mattress as well as a more appealing wallpaper.
The bathroom mirror is broken and needs replacing as well as the bathroom sink.
When you enter the loft you discover lots of storage boxes. You decide to have a good look in all of the boxes before getting rid the things that are broken or that you don’t need. Some things may be salvageable and there might even be some treasures hidden up in the loft.
The outside of the house needs some scaffolding so that it can get a fresh coat of paint. Some structural work will need to be done.
You see there is lots to be considered to transform this diamond in a rough into your dream house. This will take some time. But you know that the result will totally be worth it all.
You cannot repair everything yourself or make every decision on how decorate the house yourself so you employ some help!
Now, in therapy the first thing you have to do as an overall assessmentof the house, what state is it in? Have there been some external events that cracked the exterior, such life events as moving house or country, changing schools, new siblings, parents getting divorced or married, a global pandemic?
Is there a solid foundation? Sometimes you can already start working on the inside of the house whilst sorting out the foundation as it is safe enough to enter. Sometimes the foundation (therapeutic relationship) needs more time before you can even enter the house safely and look at all the rooms.
Then the next step is to assess the requirements of each room and to consider all of the options that you have within each room. In each room We will make decisions together, in line with what you want and need.
Let’s say in the kitchen we look at lifestyle components, like nutrition and exercise.
The living room represents social factors such as relationships with friends, and family, but also relationships at school/work and your overall work-life balance. If you have a bigger house you might have a study where all of the school and work responsibilities are situated.
In the children’s room we can find the experiences and memories of our upbringing.
The bathroom is where we consider how much time you carve out for self-care, how kind you are to yourself. How do you express feelings of joy, excitement, anger, sadness or anxiety?
In the master bedroom we look at how much sleep you are getting and wether this sleep is restful. We would also consider how thoughts impact the overall house.
In the loft we look at behaviours trying to figure out if they are helpful or unhelpful, which behaviours we need to slightly modify. In the loft people often find hidden treasures, strengths that you didn’t know where there! Luckily, we decided to look into every box that was up there before throwing some of them out.
If multiple rooms need new wallpaper the work might be happening simultaneously.
The scaffolding represents supportive measures that may seem over the top, too much but are needed to provide your house with temporary additional support whilst all of the work is going on on the inside as well as the outside of your house! Something like scheduling activities or scheduling downtime, using many visual reminders or timers etc. The scaffolding can be taken down bit by bit the more stable the house becomes and eventually it will be gone completely.
At the end you have your Dream House! But in order to keep it so dreamy you will have to continue taking care of it. Declutter, hoover, look after your plants, clean the bathroom, tidy the living room. This part you will be able to do yourself.
