Goals of Somatic Resiliency

Goals of Somatic Resiliency

There are only two goals of Somatic Resiliency.

Better Quality of Life

Better Day-to-Day Functioning

I believe we need to continue keeping these two goals in mind throughout the course of therapy with a patient. Too often we all, including me, forget to keep assessing these goals. But more importantly, it is very easy for us to confuse the goals of therapy with the goals of our particular treatment modalities.

For instance, If I am a somatically oriented therapist, I tend to want my patient to notice, experience, and track body sensations. If I am a cognitive-behavioral therapist, I want my patient to become aware of how to assess, challenge, and modify distorted negative cognitions. If I am a dialectical-behavioral therapist, I want my patient to learn distress tolerance skills, mindfulness, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. If I am a psychodynamic therapist, I want my patient to understand how past relationships affect the present, current functioning and be willing to examine transference reactions. If I am an internal family systems therapist, I want my patient to understand their parts, the functioning and interrelationship of their parts and to see there are no bad parts.

But, what do we do when our patient is unable or unwilling to participate in out particular modalities or don’t get better when they are participating? This is when we tend to blame the patient. We think things such as “Maybe this person is not ready to change” or “They are resistant to change” or “Perhaps there may be some secondary gain” or “maybe they just have a personality disorder”. Or, we might say we cannot help them and refer them to another therapist. When we think along these lines we will invariably, inadvertently shame the patient. Unfortunately, this is not rare. It is common. I have done it myself more times than I would like to admit.

If we see the goals of therapy as helping our patients have a better quality of life and improved day-to-day functioning, we can help avoid these pitfalls. When we remember it is the quality of the therapeutic relationship which matters most in our therapy we can relax some and remind ourselves to just “be” with the patient.

Now there are some patients who self-sabotage the therapy or the therapeutic relationship. We will cover these in the complex topic section under:

Psychodynamic concepts and principles in Somatic Resiliency

Transference and counter transference issues

Therapeutic impasses

Ego-dystonic vs ego-syntonic adaptive strategies

Primary brain disorders