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How to Successfully Practice Activity Scheduling With Your Counseling 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, Behavioral Activation is a crucial component of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that helps clients understand how behaviors 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 counselor, 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 counseling top of mind. Learn more about Therachat for clinicians.

How Counselors Can Improve Couples 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 counseling 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 counseling clients

Studies show that homework benefits couples counseling 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 counseling, 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 counseling goals. This is because homework encourages client independence by urging them to implement the methods taught in their counseling sessions. Additional work done at home translates to faster and more thorough results.

Increased benefits

Couples counseling 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 counseling. 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 Behavior 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 counseling sessions. Homework is a proven way to help clients meet goals, see increased benefits, and experience long-term positive effects from counseling. Adding exercises to do at home helps the client to implement the methods from counseling 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 counseling 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.

8 Benefits And Downsides of HIPAA-Compliant Texting

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Privacy and confidentiality are important factors when it comes to dealing with client information. When patients visit the hospital, communicate with doctors and their mental health specialist, hey expect all of the information to be retained securely.

In the incredibly digital world we live in, our data can be exposed to being attacked, but with secure systems in place, the chances of this happening make it very difficult for any hacker or threat to break through and damage or steal confidential information.

Being compliant with secure laws and regulations regarding your data, can increase your chances of keeping you and your client’s information safe from any attacks. Healthcare institutions and professionals in the US are subjected to HIPAA-compliance. And this is also the case when texting or communicating with clients.

There are plenty of resources that inform you about the possible services for HIPAA-compliant texting, but in this article we’re going to dive into some of the benefits of being HIPAA ready when communicating with clients. [Read more…] about 8 Benefits And Downsides of HIPAA-Compliant Texting