Good therapy can seem like magic. You sit in your therapist’s office and talk and things in your life start to get better. You don’t get as upset during conversations with your partner and don’t get as stressed out at work. You finally start dealing with that bad habit that’s been holding you back and are feeling creative again.
How can therapy do this? While there’s an art to therapy, there’s a science to it, too, and specific things you can do to increase your chances of success. In this article, we explore an often-overlooked way to improve your outcomes in therapy: setting tangible and measurable goals.
It’s possible to take even the vaguest or most poetic motivations for therapy and set goals based on them that you can use to track your progress. This can prevent you from getting blocked or stuck in therapy or having no idea if it’s working or not.
Read on for tips on how you can set goals for therapy. By following these steps, you can come up with a list of personally meaningful goals that can keep your work in therapy focused and productive.