When I was in grad school, an instructor told our class it would be a good idea for us to get our own therapy so that we could better understand how the process worked.

A classmate raised her hand.

“But how does it work?” she asked.

My instructor shrugged her shoulders and said simply, “It’s magic.”

Having experienced the magic myself, I can tell you she’s right — at least in a metaphorical way. When therapy works, it can be difficult to quantify exactly what makes it successful.

That’s because there are a lot of factors, one of which is probably just being in the right place at the right time.

Beyond that it becomes a little more complicated.

I’ve talked here about how to find the right therapist, which includes finding someone whose financial arrangements, office location and personality work for you. You also want to find someone who has been trained in the issues you want to work through and whose gender, cultural background and style/approach are compatible with yours.

Effective therapists intuitively know how to build rapport with their clients and create an environment that feels safe and secure, which hopefully will foster growth and healing.

That’s the therapist’s responsibility.

Clients have responsibility too, because good therapy is a collaborative work between two people working toward the same goals. (For more on things you can do to get the most out of therapy, read here.)

Having said all that, a big part of getting the most out of therapy is simply showing up.

I don’t just mean showing up for your appointments.

I mean really showing up. Showing up for therapy means being willing to be open and vulnerable, to talk about hard or uncomfortable topics and to take responsibility (at least partially) for your life not being what you want it to be.

In a 2009 study conducted in Norway, researchers asked individuals who had formerly been in therapy and viewed it successful what made it so.

Their answers touched on several themes, two of which were the therapist’s responsibility and two that were more up to the client.

Wise, warm and competent

First and foremost, these clients stated they benefitted from a relationship with their therapist who they found to be “wise, warm and competent.”

The therapeutic relationship — when done right — can replicate a healthy parent/child relationship and repair wounds that were inflicted decades earlier. It’s hard to explain exactly how that happens. It’s a little more concrete than magic, but when it works, clients experience healing which can often feel magical.

For some clients, the relationship with their therapist is the first time in their lives they have experienced a healthy connection with another human.

Communication is open and honest, boundaries are clear, there is room for mistakes (and repair). There is a sense of trust and safety that fosters openness and vulnerability.

Therapists talk about this relationship being a “container” or holding place to create space for clients to replicate the qualities of that relationship in their outside world. Think of your therapy as taking place in a research lab. It’s a place to practice, experiment, try new things, to see what works and throw out what doesn’t.

Harville Hendrix, the founder of Imago therapy, says, “We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship.”

Finding a warm, wise and competent therapist is a wonderful place for this healing to occur.

Hope and commitment

The second theme these researchers found is that even when the client experienced profound feelings of hopelessness and despair, the therapist consistently held a sense of hope and commitment on their behalf.

Even when clients showed up feeling emotionally dysregulated or chaotic inside, the therapist remained stable and constant. The therapist wasn’t rattled by anything the client brought to the session, but instead created a sense of calm and provided a non-judgmental space for the client to explore the chaos.

The researchers state, “when strong and confusing feelings and inner discontinuity reigns, continuity in the relationship with the therapist as a real and emotionally stable person became a very important source of hope and safety for these participants.”

Therapist and writer Laurel Parnell says, “Clients attune to and ‘borrow’ our courage and confidence which helps lessen their fear and shame so that they can work through painful experiences in a new way.”

When therapy is successful, the relationship with a wise and competent therapist becomes the container. When therapists remain committed and consistent, that container gets filled with hope and allows clients to move past their pain and into growth.

Challenging and changing long-held beliefs

The first two factors are largely up to the therapist. It is the therapist’s responsibility to bring their full self into the session and to create an environment for growth and change to happen.

The next two factors are more up to the client (this is the part about showing up).

First, the clients in this study were willing to challenge long-held beliefs about themselves and the world. Individuals almost always come into therapy with deeply rooted (and often negative) beliefs about themselves and the world around them, and most people typically hold on very tightly to these beliefs.

Psychologists refer to these beliefs as “schemas” and by definition, they can be tough to change. Schemas are borne in early life and are reinforced throughout our development from infants to young adults (and traumatic experiences can hijack our perspective at any time).

According to attachment theorists, in order for healthy development to take place, a child needs to consistently feel seen, safe, secure and soothed. Childhood is the place where we learn whether adults can be trusted, whether or not the world is a safe place, whether it is okay to get our needs met, whether we are okay and others are okay. Unfortunately, many people do not have consistently positive experiences in these areas, which allows negative beliefs take root and thrive.

In order for therapy to be successful, clients must be willing to see things from alternative perspectives. They have to accept that their childhood beliefs may have been true at the time, but aren’t necessarily now. Or they were true in one situation but not in every situation. Just because something “was” doesn’t mean it always “is.”

Clients who feel safe, seen, soothed and secure in the therapy room can have what we call a “corrective emotional experience” which forms new connections in the brain and allows for more flexible thinking and perceiving.

Finding meaning and connections

Finally, clients who found success in therapy were able to find meaning and connections in their life experiences that they had not seen before.

Painful experiences leave an indelible mark on our lives, and therapy is not about erasing these memories or learning to act like they never happened. Instead, the therapeutic process helps us come to a place of acceptance and find meaning in our pain. Examples are finding ways to use our painful experiences to help others, or to benefit from the character-building effects that hardships create.

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl says, “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

Finding meaning in our experiences — even the painful ones — allows us to feel more hopeful and to get “unstuck” in our grief.

When we allow the therapeutic process to do its magic, we often emerge as a different person. Our worldview begins to change. We start to see others and ourselves differently. We are less judgmental, more open and more willing to consider other points of view. Ultimately we find meaning in our experiences and are able to use even the painful ones to help us become the very best version of ourselves.

If you are in the Greenwood/Indianapolis, Indiana area and are interested in learning more about how the therapy process works, give us a call at 317-743-8202 or email [email protected]. Even if you’re not in the area and have questions, we would be glad to help if we can.