What are your “lite” sessions like?

I'm in the "lite sessions are a waste of time" camp. Actually, lighter sessions are typically problematic for me. Light will often lead to therapist self disclosure and apparently I don't do well with self disclosure.

I don't tend to have a lot of light sessions. Each regular session is heavy and ends with me leaving in tears. I had one light session in January- but that was when I'd booked a session the day before an exam and I was worried about going too heavy just in case. Personally I don't think I'd do it again because it felt like just random chit chat and not really worth the ££. But if that's what you need at the moment so be it.

I usually just lighten up the session by doing a little chitchat with her, but I don't really want a full lite session. If I needed a break, I'd just schedule more time between sessions. Usually, I start with the tough stuff because T makes me feel better, and I dont feel like I accomplished anything if I just talk about lite stuff ( am I a therapy overachiever? Lol).

Not sure I have choice over intensity. I can be taking about something "lite" and bam, the unconscious has its own way pulling something out of the bag cleverly disguised as "lite"

I had lite sessions with my longtime T. It wasn't an intentional thing, it was usually just that I was in a good mood and wasn't about to ruin that by delving deep. I found them helpful. I'd usually just chatter endlessly about what was on my mind, and got some relief from that. One thing that lite sessions can be good for is helping your T get to know you as a whole person. If I only ever talked about my traumas, that would make for a pretty one-dimensional impression of me. I found it helpful for the therapeutic relationship for me to have opportunities where my more negativistic character traits weren't so prominently displayed as they are when working on my primary issues. I think it can help strengthen the alliance between t and client. That said, I would not like for lite sessions to occur as some sort of planned exercise. For me, that would probably feel rather unnatural and fake, like we weren't talking about the elephant in the room. If I'm struggling, having a lite session doesn't do me much good, because it doesn't reflect my inner turmoil. So I don't think I could plan on alternating deep work with lite sessions and have it not feel rather stifling. Basically, if it happens naturally, great, if not, it's not something I'm looking for.

"Light" (or at least, lighter) sessions aren't really something I do on purpose, at least consciously, but do happen and serve an important purpose from time to time. It tends to happen when I start off by talking about something less central to the "big" issues we're focused on, or perhaps something I feel strongly positively about, or even just something I feel more distant from than the more heavy, intense, emotionally fraught topics that usually come up. If I were consciously feeling like things had been too much recently I'd probably just say that though, and see where things went from there.

Thank you all! It looks like I will be doing some driving phobia work today. As t says “still intense but in a different way”

Lite sessions for me are when we are chatting about school and I am explaining how the school system works and why it is so f***** up in certain aspects. Sometimes we talk about my plans for university too. However, I never really have a completely lite session bc we generally talk about hard topics too and at some point, we just switch to another easier one bc there is nothing else I could tell him about or I am just forgetting certain aspects. We also joke about some aspects contributing to a topic which makes the session rather lite.

The driving phobia session was such a good choice this week.
I have found that if we are trying to find a “fun” destination it makes it more rewarding and interesting.

Kashi has a little hole in the wall store that he likes that he showed me how to get to. What a blast! Phobia work and having a fun lite session? Yes! And it was oddly productive.

Sometimes with driving sessions it is over so fast that I feel a little sad that I didn’t get to talk more. It did not feel that way this week.

There is something to be said for working no like this once in awhile!!