Dr. Eric Bender

is your relationship with your kid affected because of this relationship you have with a partner?

And if so, can you change that?

Or are there other issues here that are just too difficult?

And in that case, maybe your relationship would get better.

I don't know if this is a misunderstanding, but one of the things that I find I'm laughing because I will see people, they'll come in and be like, they'll talk.

All right, so how long do I have to do this?

Like there's a deadline.

Yeah, I'm like, okay, so therapy is a slow burn.

You're not going to necessarily feel like you're in another place in six weeks.

It takes time.

You might, hopefully you will, but it's going to take some time for you to really make a lot of the changes.

You're going up against often decades of things.

So there are people in my practice that I've seen for a decade or longer, and hopefully that doesn't mean I'm a terrible doctor.

Hopefully it means that they're still getting something out of this relationship.

So I think one is that.

Two, an understanding I hope people can have is that most of therapy happens outside of the office.

You have that hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, depending on how often you're seeing your therapist with them in the office.

But what is sticking with you outside?

How are you thinking about what you left with when you were talking to your therapist?

So I think that's another thing to realize.