“Treatment goals include areas that are influenceable by work on the self; life goals depend heavily on factors outside one’s control. 🧵
Therapy goals thus might include reducing perfectionism, increasing realistic self-esteem, resolving an internal conflict, making a difficult choice, mourning a painful loss, and so on.
Life goals include, for example, finding a partner or spouse, getting a good job, or becoming a parent. They may be attained more easily when therapy goals have been met, but they are not themselves treatment goals.
Clinicians cannot promise that at the end of the therapy there will be a partner, a job, or a baby; for those aspirations, too much depends on external circumstances.
Newer therapists need supervisory help in not signing on to pursue a client’s life goals
but instead in reconceptualizing and reframing the clinical task as internally directed work that may increase the probability of achieving such goals.” - Nancy McWilliams
#therapistsconnect #psychoanalysis #psychstudent #therapisttwitter #psychotherapy
#therapistsconnect #psychoanalysis #psychstudent #therapisttwitter #psychotherapy
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