{"id":302,"date":"2019-04-18T16:56:28","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T16:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/?p=302"},"modified":"2019-04-18T19:02:22","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T19:02:22","slug":"10-ways-to-tell-that-someone-is-not-ready-for-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/18\/10-ways-to-tell-that-someone-is-not-ready-for-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Ways to Tell that Someone is Not Ready for Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Some people make appointments with a therapist before the person is ready for counseling. While a percentage of people will stick with the therapy, even if it’s going slow and they have their inner barriers to overcome; other people will show that they are not ready before calling the first listed provider. Plenty of people feel resistant to therapy for various reasons and while they try, they just don’t want to be in therapy. Here are some behaviors that tell me that a person is not ready. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.The person makes an appointment far\nin advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a person says they can only come\ntwo weeks from next Tuesday for their first appointment, they’re\nlikely to forget the appointment. Of course, I have plenty of clients\nwho make once a month sessions but that’s after they’ve seen me\nweekly for a couple of months and feel that they just want to check\nin. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The person doesn’t show up for their\nfirst appointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can understand if a car breaks down\nor it snows and the person just can’t make it in. It happens\nsometimes. But when a person doesn’t show up for your first\nappointment, I get apprehensive about their other appointments. Some\npeople do perfectly fine and continue on while others seem to have\ndifficulty getting themselves to the sessions. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.The person doesn’t call to cancel the\nappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know unexpected events can happen–\nbut call or email. It’s unfair to me and the rest of my clients for\nme to sit in my office expecting that the person will be there and\nthey have no plans of showing up. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. The person can’t remember who I am. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as I try to understand that\nmaybe the person didn’t catch my name when I called, call my\nvoicemail or keep my number so person can look it up, I’ve had more\nthan one client who called to cancel and did not know who I was so\nthey had to leave a message somewhere. And this is doesn’t bode well\nwhen it’s their first appointment. It’s worse when they’ve been\nseeing me for some time. I’ve even called clients who I haven’t seen\nin a couple of weeks and when they ask, \u201cWho?\u201d I know that\nthey’re never coming back for anything. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. The person hangs up on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the past, I’ve called clients to\nremind them of appointments or called when they were a few minutes\nlate to an appointment. I’ve noticed that this mostly happens when\nsomeone had no intention of showing up for their first appointment. I\noccasionally text or email to see where people are and if I don’t\nreceive anything back, I go about my day. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. In a month, you cancel at least 2-3\nappointments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a person is meant to see me once a\nweek and then cancels or doesn’t show a majority of the time, I don’t\nkeep that slot open for them. I usually warn them of this before it\nhappens. It’s a frustrating part of being in private practice. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. The person makes an appointment for couples counseling without consulting the other person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a person intends on coming in with their significant others, it’s best to consult with them about their schedule. For me, this is a sign that either one of the people is just not interested in fixing the relationship and it was most likely going to break up anyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. No matter what the cost is, they\ndon’t want to pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people budget for therapy. I used\nto work with someone that would advise people to lower their phone\nbill or buy less coffee or just generally look over their budget to\nsee if they can cut some things out to afford therapy. Some people\ndon’t want to come to therapy and no matter if it was $5, they\nwouldn’t attend sessions. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

9.They want a weekend session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve worked in the field long enough\nto know that most people, even couples, can make time during the day\nto come in for a session. One couple would even have both members\ndrive an hour to meet in the middle– at my office– to come for a\nsession. Most people can swing something during the week. When\nsomeone has this and the issue with paying for sessions, I can almost\nguarantee that they will drop out in the first three session. There\nare very few therapists who work on the weekend and rarely a provider\nwho accept insurance. It might be that therapists need the time away\nfrom the office or they have lives they want to live outside of the\noffice. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10. They only want someone in network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t want to criticize people who\ndon’t know they can go outside of their network or who have an HMO\nplan, which does not allow the person to see non-participating\nproviders. But here’s the thing, with most plans, the person can\nchoose a provider for themselves, including a therapist. Many panels\nin CT such as Cigna, Aetna, and United are closed to new providers.\nI’m on one of these insurances and I can tell you, if I didn’t find\nsomeone who I could go to who I trusted, I would go out of network.\nI’ve looked at the website to see who accepts the insurance and even\nwhen networking, some of these providers are terrible at calling\npeople back. There are also significantly less providers who are\navailable, compared to those who accept other insurances or don’t\naccept insurances at all. The therapeutic relationship works the best\nwith someone the person likes. If the person just chooses someone at\nrandom because that provider is on their insurance, they are doing\nthemselves a disservice. And to only insist on an in-network provider\nwhen they know they can see someone else is a barrier to therapy. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some people make appointments with a therapist before the person is ready for counseling. While a percentage of people will stick with the therapy, even if it’s going slow and they have their inner barriers to overcome; other people will show that they are not ready before calling the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304,"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovescounseling.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}