Natalie Moore, LMFT, explains how therapists keep track of multiple clients by focusing on patterns and relationships rather than memorizing every detail. Therapists distinguish between content and process, take notes between sessions, and notice salient themes that recur across appointments.
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Hey guys, Natalie Moore, LMFT here, and today's topic is how do therapists remember all of their clients? Every therapist is different, and so each therapist is going to have kind of that sweet spot in terms of how many clients they see per week. There's this concept in psychotherapy of content versus process. Process. The content of a comment like "I'm doing just fine" would be the exact words of "I'm doing just fine." However, the process is a completely different dimension. So let's say the person comes in and you ask them how they're doing and they say, "I'm doing okay, I'm fine, yeah, it's good, yeah, yeah, I'm good, I'm keeping it together." You might actually wonder what's going on in their life where they're saying that they're fine, but actually you can see their affect might be telling you a different story. In psychotherapy, the process dimension is actually so much more important and so much more rich than the content dimension. It's actually not that important to remember all the little details of a client's life. For example, I don't need to know my client's mom's name to know that the relationship that they have with their mom is causing them tension or distress. I'm going to help them tune into, well, as you're talking about your relationship with your mom, how do you feel in your body right now? What's happening with your breathing? Do you start to talk faster or slower. That's really the juice of a psychotherapy session anyway. It's actually the relationship between the client and the therapist that's the catalyst for therapeutic growth and change. You might think, "Oh, the therapist has to remember everything about that client's life so that they can analyze the person, tell them what their problem is, and tell them what the solution is." But really it's a relationship. It's a dynamic process. With your friend group, for example, you have a unique relationship with each friend It's like its own entity. And so therapists have that with their clients too, especially relational therapists. I have a unique relationship with each client. If I know the broad strokes and I can focus on my relationship with that client, that's gonna be really helpful. If something is really pertinent and really important to my client, it's going to come up multiple times. It gets gonna come up over and over and over again in sessions. And so eventually I'm going to remember what they're talking about. Therapists take notes after their sessions. Some therapists take notes during session. I personally don't like doing that. I take notes after my sessions while everything is still fresh in my mind as to what we did and what we talked about, and that also helps therapists. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you have a request, if there's a burning question you have, I love doing these kinds of videos and making this information really available so that everybody can consume it. And if you want to learn more about me, you can go to my website or you can give me a call. Take care and hope to see you soon. Bye!
