Well, first let me tell you what COVID-19 therapy would not look like. It would need not be sitting or lying on the couch talking about your childhood, analyzing your dreams, or having a person sit off to the side quietly taking notes. A lot of treatments we offer nowadays are very practical, very short term, and very skills-based. We almost treat it like a class sometimes where we could say, how can we supplement the skills you already have to help you cope just a little bit better?
We may teach you some tips on how to examine the way you're thinking and how that could influence how you feel. We may teach you some strategies to help calm your body down like through slowing your breathing or learning muscle relaxation. Or it may teach you some behavioral tricks on how to look at your routine and make some alterations that help set yourself up for success. All of these are then yours for the forward and the future so that you're less likely to actually need help again.
You may be thinking, well, I've had therapy before, well, I have to start all over again. If I just want to talk to a therapist about my COVID-19 issues. That's a tricky question to answer because in some ways, when you start with a therapist they're going to want to know at least a little bit about you. Where your strengths are, where your challenges have been, and how they intersect with the current COVID-19 crisis.
However, you should know that there are a variety of different therapy approaches, some which place much greater emphasis on going back to your past, understanding your childhood, seeing what developmental issues may have arisen along the way, and then seeing how those intersect with what you're struggling with now. In other therapists and other therapeutic approaches say, well, let's start the here now, and let's see where and how COVID-19 is causing you to struggle and then selectively, if need be go back a little bit to get a little more information mainly with the idea of looking to see are there other areas where you've struggled similarly that we could capitalize on to help you feel better now.
You also, if you've been in therapy before, always have the option of going back and renewing that relationship with the person you've already established your relationship with so you don't have to start from scratch. The most important thing to note is you have a lot of choices and you can determine the right one for yourself.