Psychotherapy is a comprehensive therapeutic approach with different techniques and modalities that aim to assist certain individuals struggling with mental health illnesses. However, the type of therapy that can be specifically identified as supporting self-care and providing reinforcement is supportive psychotherapy. Unlike some other types of therapy that take into consideration past traumas and subconscious conflicts, this form of therapy is specifically focused on helping people deal with present issues, improving their way of living, and developing resistance to emotional distress.
Additionally, supportive psychotherapy focuses on helping the general population with one or more mental disorders as well as those who are going through stress, changes in personality, or alterations in major life statuses. While some people may suffer from overwhelming feelings and states, others may require assistance in coping with the challenges of daily life. In any case, supportive psychotherapy is a gentle, client-oriented, and highly adaptable form of treatment, the primary goal of which is to assist the client in achieving their goals.
This blog will cover a general overview of supportive psychotherapy, the targeted client, and supportive psychotherapy therapists’ strategies to give recommendations and reassurance.
What Is Supportive Psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is a rather general and versatile therapy that aims to strengthen a person’s stability and encourage him to adopt new strategies. It fortifies someone struggling, helps them feel more understood, offers a healthy cognitive behavioral approach, and enhances stress-coping skills.
Supportive psychotherapy may initially resemble other psychologically based treatments, such as psychodynamic therapy, where the doctor is trying to find out some issues in the patient or his early childhood. In contrast, supportive psychotherapy is more rooted in the ‘present.’ Another role is to provide the client with an opportunity to be heard, to listen non-judgmentally, and to be put in charge of the problem-solving process.
Nonetheless, unlike analytic therapy, it is aimed at problem-solving, crisis intervention, and improvement of personal interaction. The therapy process depends on the therapist-patient connection, and the therapist consciously builds the patient’s worth and emotional fortitude.
Read More: The Effects of Depression on Mental Health
Who Can Benefit From Supportive Psychotherapy?
Supportive psychotherapy is so flexible that it can be applied to any psychological illness in the phase of a person’s life. Here are some common reasons why individuals seek out or benefit from supportive psychotherapy:
- Depression and anxiety: Person-centered supportive psychotherapy is aimed to help those with depression and anxiety disorders bring out their feelings and work out ways to better deal with them.
- Chronic stress or burnout: Everyone who is overloaded at work or home, single parents whose children give them a lot of stress, and sick people with many worries can learn how to manage stress and have someone to talk to.
- Personality disorders: Clients with personality disorders, especially BPD, will find this type of therapy helpful since it affords them a clear path to getting assistance.
- Grief and loss: Crisis counseling for grief-supportive psychotherapy is a way of helping the person who is grieving to get past their loss.
- Major life transitions: Whether moving toward a new job or moving into a different city, going through a Divorce, or any transition, supportive psychotherapy is useful in easing the pressure accompanying change.
- Chronic illness: Chronic physical health conditions are always associated with stress, which affects the affected individuals. Phenomenological supportive psychotherapy may prove useful in the treatment of patients with various mental disorders suffered as a result of chronic diseases.
Supportive psychotherapy is useful for many, but most appropriate for those readers who may not be ready for deeper methods of supportive psychotherapy techniques or for anyone who needs support to remain emotionally and psychologically strong, day after day.
Read More: Understanding the link between anxiety and migraine
Key Elements Of Supportive Psychotherapy
Supportive psychotherapy entails using different methods and interventions, including didactic means, encouragement, and prompts. So, let’s look at the basic components that define this approach to therapy.
Emotional Support
The key elements of supportive psychotherapy, therefore, fully understood, revolve around the emotional support a therapist offers. The role of the therapist here is to establish the environment in which the patient would be comfortable expressing themself, their emotions, anxiety, and other difficulties. This environment cultivates trust, which enables the patient to let out certain emotions that they may not be able to express in other places.
For instance, a person diagnosed with social anxiety disorder may feel pressured with the thought of sharing fears with relatives and friends. This is an area where, in therapy, they can express their concern without having someone telling them that it is not proper for them to think that way or to have such thoughts.
Active Listening
The knowledge area in supportive psychotherapy comprises active listening, among other skills. This includes the therapist listening carefully to what the patient is saying verbally and their nonverbal behaviors and effects. The therapist may restate and even repeat what a patient says to let the patient know that they have been listened to.
For example, a patient suffering from depression may be given a feeling of being ignored or not understood in the community. To some patients, the time the therapist spends listening to them can make them feel special and wanted by a therapist.
Motivation and Rewarding of Praise
Facilitative psychotherapists encourage customers to be confident about the activities they can adopt to handle the issues. This could mean acknowledging achievement, including getting through a panic attack or successfully discussing issues with another person.
Positive reinforcement assists the patient feel they have control over the situation. This improves self-esteem, self-efficacy, and general capacity in adversity. Moreover, a competent therapist must help the patient focus on the positive things and see how much the patient has developed, even if it is a little.
Problem-Solving
Another goal of supportive psychotherapy is to provide people with directed problem-solving techniques. Goal setting is the process through which the therapist and the patient analyze the problem into workable subtasks. It may be useful to build action plans or explain other behaviors the patient might employ when not in therapy.
For instance, an individual facing overwhelming pressures in their workplace will develop an action plan with the therapist on how to handle responsibilities, what to say to the employer, or how to use relaxation to lower tension.
Psychoeducation
Psychoeducation is helpful for supportive psychotherapy as a part of the treatment for patients who may not be fully aware of their disorder. The first way the patient benefits from the presence of the therapist is that he informs them of the condition they are suffering from, about their illness, and in the process, offers them a reason for which they are going through different symptoms.
For example, a person with anxiety gets information on the way the body behaves during stress and what research reveals about fight or flight responses. Knowing such somatic and psychic changes is beneficial in decreasing the level of helplessness and enhancing the patient’s coping potential for anxiety.
Maintaining Therapeutic Boundaries
Supportive psychotherapy means that the therapist exhibits clear, stringent boundaries. This is particularly good for avoiding dependence and helping the patient gain as much independence as possible. The therapist is warm, understanding, and caring but vigilant about fostering the patient’s problem-solving and choice-making abilities without making them dependent on the therapist.
In this way, the therapist protects the therapeutic relationship and promotes the patient’s ability to cope with various life tasks.
Read More: ADHD Telehealth: An Effective Way To Overcome Signs Of ADHD
The Benefits Of Supportive Psychotherapy
Although supportive psychotherapy is not a cure and is not designed to replace other forms of psychotherapy and medications acting as the primary line of treatment, it provides many useful tools for people who may struggle with challenging emotions or, at the very least, could use strategies for coping with chronic stress. Some of the key benefits include:
- Emotional relief: The patients get emotional satisfaction due to an opportunity to speak about their problems.
- Improved coping skills: The therapist assists people in establishing realistic ways of dealing with ordinary stress, worry, or depression.
- Enhanced self-esteem: Praise support strengthens a patient’s confidence and makes them believe you can conquer the challenge.
- Stronger interpersonal relationships: Cognitive behaviors that make people change involve learning new ways of communicating with people and solving problems.
- Increased resilience: Challenges make work more interesting, and the patients become stronger as they draw a strong coping mechanism from their emotional state.
Concluding Remarks!
Supportive psychotherapy is a warm, here-and-now-oriented therapy designed to help individuals with emotional disorders, provide them with coping skills, and build their psychological strength. It enables a person to face life’s issues practically and with an emotional strength enhanced through support provision, listening, and problem-solving skills. Most suitable for stressed, transitioning, or mentally ill patients, this therapy helps improve the individual self.