Restatements In Cognitive Therapy: Reasons For Effective Therapy

Exploration stage. Restatements are often used in psychotherapy for several reasons. One reason is that client often benefit from hearing what they had recently said come from someone else. This allows the client to hear their thoughts and view them form a more objective perspective. Also, restatements allow the client to hear how they sound to others, which can be a simple yet valuable practice. I believe that using restatements is a strength of mine because it helps me clarify my own thoughts about the client. Often times clients contradict themselves or unknowingly say something that is inaccurate. With that being said, using restatements allows the therapist to conceptualize the client faster and more accurately, which in turn leads to

Nonverbal behaviors, such as body posture, head nods, facial expression, and eye contact, are important for effective therapy. Nonverbal behaviors convey a variety of messages to clients that can show empathy or understanding. If done incorrectly, the client can feel closed off, judged, or ignored. For example, too little eye contact can make the client feel like the therapist is not listening or does not care about hat is being discussed. Or, sitting with crossed arms or an unamused facial expression can have the same effects. When paying attention to it, I believe that I can execute adequate nonverbal behaviors, but in the heat of an intense moment, where I am thinking deeply about the client’s situation, I fear that I will be challenged with reacting to my own inner thoughts. In other words, I do not want to scrunch my face when I am deep in thought or look off in another direction—which I tend to do when I am focusing. Although this is undoubtedly a challenge, I am confident that I will eventually become comfortable with nonverbal behaviors with

One reason why they are challenging, is because they are meaningful statements, or questions, that tie in several different aspects of what the client had expressed. With that being said, it is important to be specific and accurate with interpretations. While interpretations can provide meaningful insight that can greatly help the client, they can also be inaccurate and detrimental. For example, if a client does not believe that a therapist’s interpretation is not correct, the client may begin to question if the therapists is listening to him or her, or it the therapist is off on other details as well. For such reasons, interpretations should be infrequent and well thought out. I believe that with practice, I will be more confident with using interpretations, but currently they seem to be a challenging aspect of the insight