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The benefits of emotion tracking in counselling

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Emotion tracking is an effective tool that can help clients gain insights into their emotional states and identify patterns that impact their mental health. In recent years, technology has made emotion tracking more accessible for counselling clients. A digital homework app like Therachat, helps individuals learn about themselves in an intuitive way. Discover the benefits of tracking in counselling and how technology enhances the therapy process.

Benefits of emotion tracking in therapy

By monitoring their emotions, clients can better understand their mood fluctuations and recognize recurring trends that may influence their psychological well-being. This knowledge allows clients to work with their therapist to develop strategies to manage triggers. It can also help clients communicate their emotional experiences more effectively — with their therapist and their loved ones. It can also provide clients with a sense of control over their mental health. By actively monitoring their moods, clients can feel empowered to continue taking steps to improve their mental health. This process helps clients stay motivated throughout therapy by allowing them to see their progress over time.

Using a digital homework app

A digital homework app like Therachat includes a tracking feature that allows clients to log their moods throughout the day. Clients can also add notes to their entries to provide more context to their therapist.

Therapists can use the emotion tracking feature in Therachat to monitor their clients’ emotional states and identify patterns over time. This information helps counsellors tailor their therapy sessions and address specific concerns — providing more targeted interventions. Therapists can also use it to track their client’s progress over time. This is an effective way to set goals and evaluate the effectiveness of therapy, allowing counsellors to pivot their strategy if client progress doesn’t improve. 

How to track successfully

  • Be consistent: For the most consistent data, encourage clients to track their moods at regular intervals. For example, a daily tracker might note their emotions in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Doing this consistently over time will give clients and their therapists a better idea of patterns. 
  • Be honest: It’s essential that tracking accurately reflects what clients are feeling. Remind them to be candid during these check-ins. 
  • Don’t gloss over the good: Many clients who start emotion tracking are stuck in a low mood cycle, which can sometimes make it difficult to see the good. Encourage them to track the happy moments too. 

Emotion tracking empowers counsellors and their clients

Emotion tracking enhances therapy by giving clients control over their mental health. It also allows therapists to monitor their clients’ emotional states over time. By using emotion tracking in treatment, clients can better understand their emotional experiences and work with their therapist to develop mental health strategies. 

Start emotion tracking with your clients today. Learn more about Therachat for Clinicians. 

How to successfully practice activity scheduling with your counselling clients

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As 2023 ramps up, clients are focused on implementing their goals and resolutions. For many, this looks like building social connections, making time for family, and scheduling new or well-loved activities. However, for clients who are depressed, activity planning can feel like a significant hurdle. While it can be daunting, Behavioural Activation is a crucial component of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) that helps clients understand how behaviours influence emotions. This knowledge empowers clients to re-engage with the parts of their lives that bring them fulfillment and joy. With the support of a counsellor, this activity planning framework helps clients prioritize their wants and needs clearly and interactively.

1. Identify the activities your client wants to participate in 

The first step is to get a clear idea of which activities your clients want to do. For depressed clients, this can look like reconnecting with activities that used to bring them joy in the past. Encourage your clients to create a list of hobbies and activities that offer a sense of peace, contentment, or accomplishment. 

2. Help them implement activities in their schedule 

Next, help your client commit to their identified activities. Find specific times of the week that they can schedule for their hobby and participate in uninterrupted. Note down when, how, and with who they’ll do the activity. 

3. Plan for roadblocks

Roadblocks are inevitable when committing to an activity — especially if this is a new hobby. Help your client identify what could get in the way of them following through and spend some time creating realistic solutions to these roadblocks. If your client is more likely to go for a daily walk, suggest they find a walking partner, as socialization will make the new habit more enjoyable. 

4. Check-in often

A crucial part of success is checking in with your client. You can do this easily between sessions by utilizing a HIPAA-secure digital homework app — giving your clients an intuitive way to stay accountable. By assigning weekly activities like journaling and emotion check-ins, your clients can report their experiences to you in real-time, making progress tracking a breeze. 

5. Make time to reflect 

After activity completion, ask your clients to take a few minutes for reflection. 

Questions to consider: 

  • How did they feel before the activity? 
  • How do they feel after accomplishing their commitment to themself? 
  • Was there a difference in mood or overall thought patterns? 
  • Would they like to schedule the same activity, or would they instead replace it with something else? 

These questions allow clients to check in with themselves, boost self-trust, and reinstate confidence in their choices. 

Keep clients on track with activity scheduling

Activity scheduling is one of the best ways to connect clients to their social circles, increase life satisfaction, and get them engaged with their hobbies again. 
A digital homework app like Therachat is an intuitive way to keep clients on track with activity scheduling. It offers a gentle way to give a nudge between sessions and keep counselling top of mind. Learn more about Therachat for clinicians.

Boost journalling homework compliance for counselling clients

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Journalling has shown to be one of the best exercises to assign counselling clients between sessions. The problem arises when clients struggle to complete homework — sending them off-track in their mental health journey. This means they don’t progress as quickly or efficiently as they could if they kept up with assignments. One of the main goals of counselling is to equip patients with the tools to feel better sooner. Homework is a way to set clients up for success with healthy routines and keep a record that you and your client can refer back to if mental health conditions change.

The benefits of assigning journaling homework to counselling clients

Journalling is one of the most effective and simplest exercises to assign to counselling clients. Its accessibility makes it a no-brainer. All patients need is a pen and paper, or a computer if they prefer, to get their thoughts out and enjoy the benefits. And, different styles of journaling can yield different results. For example, studies have shown that gratitude journaling can help people sleep better, lower stress, improve interpersonal relationships, and can even lead to healthier eating. 

Most importantly, homework like journalling teaches clients that they can apply their newfound skills independently. It equips them with the confidence that they don’t need to rely on a counsellor between sessions when something goes wrong — they can reach for pen and paper. 

How to assign homework for better success

Studies have shown that assigning homework is linked to better treatment outcomes. So how can you ensure your clients complete their journaling homework? Simply knowing the benefits usually isn’t enough to keep them on top of it. The best way is to present homework in a way that clients are used to: right on their own personal devices. Take advantage of technology with a digital homework app. An all-in-one app like Therachat comes with a whole host of features that simplify your practice while benefitting your clients. 

Clients can easily access: 

  • Daily homework reminders
  • Skill-building activities
  • Emotion tracking
  • Mindfulness exercises

For counsellors, a digital homework app allows you to: 

  • Save time and help even more clients. Create and customize digital activities that can be assigned to multiple clients. 
  • Follow up with clients through an easy-to-use instant messenger that’s safe, private, and more convenient than texting with your personal number. 
  • Track and look back on client progress — showing them how far they’ve come. 
  • Enjoy the peace of mind that comes with added security benefits like HIPAA compliance. 
  • Forget about filing and managing physical paper documents. 

Ensure clients complete journalling homework regularly

Journalling homework comes with a whole host of positive benefits — but clients can only take advantage of those benefits by actually completing homework. A digital homework app is one of the most efficient ways to ensure clients are growing between sessions. Are you ready to simplify and modernize your practice? Learn more about Therachat for clinicians. 

15 mental wellness quotes to share with your counselling clients

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Counselling clients are often searching for principles to guide them during their mental health journey — particularly if they’re new in the process. For many clients, quotes offer stability and groundedness during a turbulent time. We’ve listed 15 mental wellness quotes to share with your counselling clients. Encourage them to pick a few favourites, and display them somewhere they’ll see them frequently — maybe it’s on their bathroom mirror, on their desk, or in the car. These quotes serve as a reminder of resilience and strength, encouraging your clients to keep going. 

Inspiring mental wellness quotes

  1. “Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.” — Pema Chodron
  2. “The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.” — John C. Maxwell
  3. “The best thing one can do when it is raining, is to let it rain.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  4. “Many of us feel stress and get overwhelmed not because we’re taking on too much, but because we’re taking on too little of what really strengthens us.” — Marcus Buckingham 
  5. “Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.” – Wayne W. Dyer
  6. “If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” – Mary Engelbreit
  7. “It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.” — Lucy Maud Montgomery
  8. “In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but the gratefulness that makes us happy.” — Albert Clarke
  9. “In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.” — Mitch Albom
  10. “Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly on the path to the most wonderful things that will ever happen to us.” —Nicole Reed
  11. “Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.” —J. Donald Walters
  12. Life is ten percent what you experience and ninety percent how you respond to it. — Dorothy M. Neddermeyer
  13. “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
  14. “Actually spending ten minutes clearing off one shelf is better than fantasizing about spending a weekend cleaning out the basement.” —Gretchen Rubin
  15. “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” —T.S. Eliot

Easily check in with your clients

Checking in with your clients can dramatically increase counselling outcomes. It can be as simple as sending them a weekly quote, or a kind message. Therachat allows you to securely message your clients and send them homework through an easy to use HIPAA-compliant app. Save time with our pre-made activities like emotion tracking and open journaling, or fully customize activities to fit your client’s unique needs. Ready to modernize your practice? Learn more about Therachat for clinicians.

How counsellors can improve couple’s therapy outcomes between sessions

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Couples therapy is a developing field that has shown a lot of success in the long-term retention of relationships by clients. Developments in the area of personalized homework generate ways to increase counselling clients’ benefits from therapy. Clients who engage in their homework can reach their therapy goals faster and be more conscious of their mental health along the way. 

The benefits of homework for couple’s counselling clients

Studies show that homework benefits couples counselling clients in more ways than one. Clients who receive homework in comparison to those who don’t, show a higher likelihood of success in their therapy goals, increased benefits from counselling, and long-term positive effects on their relationship. 

Higher goal-success rate

Studies show that therapy clients who receive homework show a  higher success rate with their counselling goals. This is because homework encourages client independence by urging them to implement the methods taught in their counselling sessions. Additional work done at home translates to faster and more thorough results.

Increased benefits

Couples counselling clients see increased therapy benefits when homework is implemented. A study done by Nikolaos Kazantis and his colleagues showed that clients who were more compliant in completing their task, observed better treatment outcomes. 

Long-term effects

Multiple experiments show the long-term benefits of homework in couples counselling. One study found that the effects of homework can still be seen in clients up to 12 months after ending therapy. Additionally, a study done by Tang and Kreindler showed that 20-50% of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) failure is due to non-compliance or lack of homework. 

3 couple’s therapy homework exercises to try

There are numerous ways to engage your clients in homework. With so many options, it can be daunting to choose appropriate exercises for each unique client. The good news is that with so many methods, there is always something new to try particularly if certain exercises aren’t as impactful as others. 

1. Feelings expression

It’s often difficult for couples therapy clients to express how they feel about each other. Feelings expression exercises can help your clients overcome the emotional roadblock in their relationship. The exercise is most frequently done in the format of “I feel ___ when ___.” 

2. Daily check-in exercise

It can be challenging to remember to check in on your partner with so much going on in everyone’s lives nowadays. The daily check-in exercise is just a simple reminder for your clients to connect one or more times per day. Regular check-ins can have massive benefits as they open the floor for conversation and growth. 

3. Positive language exercises

Using positive language when communicating, results in better delivery and reception of what was said. A simple exercise for clients to try is to encourage them to think about what they would like to say before saying it. The goal is to phrase the statement positively, resulting in conflict aversion and fewer communication problems.

Boost treatment outcomes

There are many ways to engage your clients to ensure that they get the most out of their counselling sessions. Homework is a proven way to help clients meet goals, see increased benefits, and experience long-term positive effects from counselling. Adding exercises to do at home helps the client to implement the methods from counselling into their everyday life and retain the skills that they learn to benefit them in the long and short term. 

A digital homework app like Therachat is an innovative way to seamlessly deliver homework to your couple’s counselling clients. You can check in with the couple between sessions and easily track the relationship’s progress over time. Elevate your practice with just one app. Learn more about Therachat for clinicians.

3 effective homework exercises for counselling clients

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Homework isn’t just for students — completing homework between sessions allows counselling clients to increase retention of new skills, stay on track with their mental health journey, and reach their goals faster. Homework is no longer a ‘nice to have’ — it’s essential for client progress. Learn more about homework exercises for counselling clients.

The effects of homework on counselling outcomes

Studies have shown that homework compliance is linked to better treatment outcomes. The good news is that there’s a variety of assignments that clients and counsellors can choose from together. So if one method isn’t sticking, there are plenty of other exercises to experiment with. 

1. Journalling

Journalling is one of the most common homework exercises for counselling clients. Journaling has multiple positive effects on clients:  less anxiety, reduced stress, and a more positive and pleasant outlook on life. It’s also highly accessible and inexpensive. 

Clients often discount journalling because they don’t know what to write about — that’s where prompts come in. There are plenty of journal prompts to generate ideas and get the wheels turning. As clients gain more experience with journalling, many begin reaching for their journal on their own for a positive tool to organize their thoughts or process emotions. They may even surprise themselves with just how much or how often they write. 

2. Breathing exercises

Breathing exercises are an effective way to reduce anxiety, stress, and calm the body. Clients can begin by incorporating breathing exercises into their daily routines. Encourage clients to schedule breathing for a few minutes once per day. The goal is to get them used to this exercise and to encourage them to get in the habit of using it in moments of stress and anxiety. 

There are multiple breathing exercises clients can choose from. They may find that some are more effective than others. Encourage clients to try a few to discover what works best for them. 

3. Mindfulness exercises

Another one of the most accessible homework exercises for counselling clients. Mindfulness-based interventions help clients become more aware of their thoughts and emotions, allowing them to halt negative thought patterns as they arise — shifting from negative, circular thinking, to more positive and rational thoughts. Over time, this is shown to be effective in reducing anxiety, stress, and depression. 

Meditation is the most common and accessible form of mindfulness. It’s able to provide relief from both internalized struggles, and external stressors like hectic environments.

What the research shows: 

  • A study found that people who maintained a long-term meditation practice lowered the negative impacts of aging on the brain. Additionally, those who had an average of 20 years of meditation practice under their belts had more grey matter in the brain. The results showed that meditation has a widespread positive effect on multiple regions of the brain.
  • A study from Johns Hopkins University found that meditation had the same effect as antidepressants on reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and pain. It’s an effective alternative for clients who either don’t want to take meditation or who haven’t responded well to medication in the past. 
  • Another study found that mindfulness was correlated with a reduction in symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). 93 participants showed a significant reduction in anxiety and an increase in positive self-statements.

Make homework as simple as possible

We know homework is effective at improving patient outcomes, but it’s also a new habit that clients will need support adopting. It’s all too easy for clients to forget about homework between sessions, so make it as simple as possible. Boost compliance and reduce barriers by making the homework experience as natural as possible for clients. A digital homework app like Therachat goes right on clients’ own devices — so they can access and complete their homework wherever they’re comfortable. 

For counsellors, this means you have the ability to: 

  • Create and customize digital activities that can be assigned to multiple clients. Save time and help a wider scope of your practice. 
  • Follow-up with clients through an easy-to-use instant messenger that’s safe, private, and more convenient than texting with your personal number. 
  • Track and look back on client progress.
  • Added security benefits like HIPAA compliance. 
  • No need to file and manage paper documents.

Ready to modernize your practice? Learn more about Therachat for clinicians.