How does couples or individual therapy work?
The meetings are scheduled once a week, which gives momentum to the therapeutic work you are starting.
The duration cannot be determined in advance according to your sexual, emotional or relational difficulty, because each individual has his or her own degree of motivation, complexity and dynamics.
The first meetings
The first meeting serves as an assessment of your reason for consultation, your objectives and your expectations. From this information, the sexologist will be able to clarify how the following meetings work according to your needs. This meeting is also essential to determine if you are comfortable and confident with the sexologist. It is important to choose your sexologist according to his personality, his approach and the interaction between you and him during the first meeting.
However, it is important to note that therapy can be confronting in some ways to allow you to move forward in your process. Relationship and sexual problems are an opportunity where we can discover the full potential of our relationship. Openness and the ability to put clients at ease on thorny subjects are required in therapy.
My approach mainly seeks to create a collaborative alliance between the partners where each one takes responsibility for the difficulties of the relationship and sexual misunderstandings.
All information disclosed is considered confidential. In addition, the therapist is required to disclose any information in order to prevent an act of violence against oneself (e.g., suicide) or against others or if the integrity and dignity of a child is in danger.
The following matches
The sexologist will gather more detailed information about the sexual or romantic difficulty that prompts you to come to see a doctor. The aim is to determine and understand the dynamics and meaning of these difficulties. Based on these hypotheses, you will establish treatment goals and means to achieve them with the sexologist.
Then
Once the understanding of sexual and romantic difficulties is complete, dating is used to overcome them and go beyond one’s limits. This step is often particularly difficult for some and the results are determined by your motivation and resilience to tolerate the anxiety that change inevitably generates.
The final step
This step consists of taking stock of the results. Before ending the therapy, the sexologist makes sure that you have integrated the therapeutic gains in order to promote the management of your future conflicts. It is always possible to space out the meetings at the end of the process in order to facilitate autonomy.
Pros and cons of therapy
Psychotherapy should help reduce the distress or disruption of functioning associated with the reason for consultation, as proven in scientific studies, but it does not include any guarantee of success. Psychotherapy has very few disadvantages, apart from the possible discomfort or discomfort associated with talking about one’s difficulties or performing certain self-help exercises outside of sessions.
Limit of confidentiality
Our code of ethics requires us to keep confidential everything that is shared in a therapy. It is possible to share your information only with your consent and with another qualified healthcare professional, for a limited period of time that is predetermined. This consent may be revoked at any time. Professional secrecy may be waived in the following cases:
- A report is necessary to the required authorities in the event that the protection of a child is not or has not been maintained (e.g., reporting to the DYP in the event of violence)
- Imminent danger to another person (desire for severe or homocidal violence against another person)
- Imminent danger to yourself (e.g., desire to act suicidal in the next few days)
- A child under 14 years of age with these parents.
