I compiled this material not only on the basis of frequently asked questions by clients, but also on the basis of my experience as a client in the CBT approach. Therefore, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with this material before starting therapy, to know what results to expect from working with a psychologist. The most important thing to note is that psychotherapy is a partnership between the psychologist and the client, that is, the client takes an active part in psychotherapy. Both the client and the psychologist are responsible for the effectiveness of the process in equal proportions 50/50, where 100 forms 50% of the client’s motivation and 50% of the psychologist’s knowledge, namely the arsenal of techniques and materials that the specialist will share with you. Client motivation is faith into the success of therapy, but not just the hope that someday everything will somehow work out by itself, but, of course, with systematic efforts. By systematic efforts, I mean performing techniques - (in CBT this is called homework) and meeting regularly, usually 1-2 times a week. It turns out that if you do not believe in the success of therapy, your motivation is not high, which means that most likely you You will miss meetings or not do homework, which means the effectiveness of therapy decreases by 50 percent or more. This suggests that you should immediately tune in to active cooperation. As you master the tools, your life skills will grow - i.e. you become more independent and take more responsibility for the therapy process (it is no longer 50/50 as at the beginning, but 80/20, and at the end 100/0). The psychologist, seeing your personal growth, makes meetings less frequent once every 2 weeks, and then lets you go free, when you can, using all the knowledge you have acquired, do without additional support. I would also like to note that it is important to do during the session notes of useful thoughts, ideas and your own realizations and re-read them between sessions for better memorization, and it’s better to even record them on a voice recorder. Why is it important to do this? Because our brain does not assimilate all the information received, and only a small part of it remains in memory. Therefore, it is better for you to have a notebook or notebook where you will write down techniques, keep a diary of thoughts and records of therapy. It is worth saying that you need to clearly define what problem/thought you want to work on, in therapy this is called a request. The session is structured in the form of a dialogue: question and answer. The specialist will explore your problem, asking leading questions (so as not to deviate from the chosen topic), which will help you see the real picture of what is happening in your answers. Expect that your emotional state will fluctuate from session to session, at some point it may become It’s even worse, but if you look at the dynamics, then it may be with fluctuations, but it’s still growth, that is, the process is not always stable, you will succeed in some things right away, and not always with great effort. After all, when a child learns to walk, it happens that he falls, and when you are learning new skills, you do not yet master them perfectly. Dynamics of changes in the process of work Frequently asked question - how many sessions will it take to solve my problem? The answer to this question is contained in the parable “The traveler asks the old man how long it is to walk to the nearest city, the old man does not answer anything, then the traveler offendedly heads towards the city, then suddenly the old man calls out to the traveler and says: “Since you walked - 2 hours,” that is, it is important to understand what your speed, your rate of change - everyone has their own, a specialist can tell you from experience how much, on average, it took other clients to work with a diagnosis similar to yours, but again this question is individual. Another point, if you have already been to several specialists and it didn’t help you, ask yourself 2 important questions - first, did your specialist use a scientific approach when working with you and second, did you work in partnership - did you make efforts on your part in the form of faith in success and completing tasks,!)