Therapy

Therapy helps people with problems that they may be experiencing in life. Its aim is to produce a change in behaviour, thoughts or feelings to reduce their personal discomforting experience and increase their sense of well-being. Although most forms of therapy use only spoken word there are forms which also use the written word, art, drama, stories, music or touch. Most therapy is between an individual and a trained psychotherapist which looks at interpersonal and relational issues. However, therapy can take place in other forms most notably in groups.

Therapy's belief is that ultimately all issues are interpersonal be it difficulties in relationships or seemingly non-interpersonal issues such as depression or anxiety. However, by addressing unresolved interpersonal issues people's seemingly non-interpersonal issues can be resolved. Therapy can be focused on general/non-specific or specific issues.

Therapy is usually designed to improve the mental health of clients or patients through the treatment of manifestations of clinically diagnosable crises. Counseling is often synonymous with therapy although it is usually a form of treatment of more everyday problems.

What has therapy therefore got to do with emotional education? Education is not a ‘treatment', does not deal with ‘clients' or ‘patients'. People are not ‘referred' to education to deal with their clinical ‘diagnoses' yet it is a question which often gets asked.

What Has Therapy Got To Do With Emotional Education?

Traditional psychotherapy and much of the development of therapeutic interventions have evolved through a medical model of existing psychological illnesses having a cure. In such models the client is seen as unwell and the therapist employs their skill to help the client back to health. The extensive use of the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders in the United States is an example of a medically-exclusive model.

However, humanistic schools of thought have taken on a different approach to therapy which sees themselves in an educational or helper role where the therapist facilitates the learning in the individual. Furthermore, integrative psychotherapy is an overarching term used for therapies combining more than one theoretical approach. Group therapy is usually a form of integrative psychotherapy not relying on a single theory but using what works. Group therapy uses the interactions between the members of the group and the therapist as the material for which therapy uses alongside past experiences and experiences outside the therapeutic group.

There are many parallels between such types of therapy and emotional education as it usually uses a ‘facilitator' who uses ‘what works' i.e. drawing on many different psychological theories and methods. The material which emotional education uses is people's past experiences, their experiences both within and outside of the group, and their interactions between group members and the facilitator. All of which is common to humanistic integrative group therapy.

However, there are clear differences which distinguish emotional education from yet another form of therapy. While some therapies use facilitators, facilitators are primarily the realm of adult education and can be seen as professionals in their own right (see here). Education can result in therapeutic experiences but it does not necessarily mean it is therapy with educational experiences.

Emotional education works with students and participants rather than clients and patients. While people may go to both emotional education and therapy to look at emotions, personality, and relationships, they primarily go to therapy because they have a problem or a diagnosis. People go to emotional education because they wish to learn about themselves or improve their life in some way such as by contributing to building a healthier society. You do not need a problem to wish to do this. Clearly there will be cross over from both areas i.e. people will go to therapy to learn about themselves or people will go to emotional education because of problems. What is important is the focus.