How to Fall in Love With Time-Limited Therapy: Lessons From Poetry and Music

ABSTRACT

With rising student demand, time-limited therapy is becoming the rule rather than the exception at college counseling centers today. While many have viewed this shift as an unwelcome intrusion, this article will examine how to embrace and capitalize on this new, compressed form. Rather than seeing it as a constraint, it will be argued that it provides an opportunity to be more poetic and musical about our work, allowing us to take more therapeutic risks, establish greater momentum, and increase the number and variety of transformative moments in our sessions. Emphasis will be placed on the lessons that poetry and music can teach with respects to deepening and enhancing relational psychotherapy with our students.

KEYWORDS:

• CCAPS-34
• college counseling
• music
• poetry
• relational psychotherapy
• time-limited therapy