Therapy stuff questions

My guess is no. 

Lora

She sounds like she's ADD!

You're right.  I hadn't thought of that.

I'm not sure I can give a percentage across the board.  It depends on the client, their goals, and what's be presented at that particular session.  For example, I started working with a new client last week (note I work with families.. the kids are the client but I spend a lot of time with parents too).  Anyway, during my first session we review history, goals, medications.  In this particular case I wrote a behavior plan to jump start things so they could start a trial run at it for a few weeks.  So I came to the session prepared with worksheets related to the goals the family defined.  It was going well for about 30 minutes, and wham... one of those crisis situations arose.  It was all them for the next 90 minutes (note my sessions can go up to 3 hours).   So how I weigh this out... if a crisis or need comes up we roll with that.  That said, if I crisis or need comes up every session for the next 2 or 3 sessions I will know it's a defense mechanism to avoid actual work on goals and therapeutic movement.  I did leave the client with a short assignment for the week.  Many of my clients seems to be crisis-driven, and when problems are solved they generate more crises because that's where their comfort resides.  So there are times a session maybe 80 client 20 me or times it may be 20 client 80 me, with the preference for a normal session being somewhere between 60/40 and 40/60.  Does this make sense?

I am a therapist.  I would say that my clients do most of the talking.  I believe that it is my job to encourage the client to tell their own story and draw out from them different ways to look at a situation, but it needs to be them that find the answers.  I am a cognitive behavioral therapist, so I'm always searching for hot cognitions or automatic thoughts, when I hear those, I may reflect those back to the client.  That eventually brings us deeper into more intermediate beliefs....usually takes about 8-10 sessions to get to core issues.  Once there, profound change can happen.  Some of my clients are very verbal, some not as much.  I cannot do my job if the client isn't giving me information. A good therapist needs the client to share as openly and honestly as possible. Also, the whole first part of the session may be going over homework.  I usually have an agenda, we usually follow the agenda in a session.  First part is homework, recap of last session, then anything new the client would like to discuss about what is going on with them currently. I was trained with the Beck method, I think that anyone that uses the Beck method should have very good outcomes. Cognitive Behavioral therapy is in the National Registry of Evidence based Programs and Practices (NREPP). The only time I may talk and ask more questions is the first session, gathering information for the diagnosis. Also in teaching skills, sometimes I teach DBT skills such as progressive relaxation.  In an educational group, I am likely to do a lot more talking.  

I would question the therapist.  Maybe she is uncomfortable, inexperienced, or having an off day. I would definitely give her feedback if it wasn't helpful.