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“Can somebody else sit in during the sessions taking place with the sport and performance psychologist?”
This is another excellent question. For example, when there is a younger athlete who may want to have Mum or Dad take part in the sessions. Or maybe a sporting coach has referred an athlete to us. And that coach feels like it would be beneficial if they were privy to the conversations that we were having regarding that athlete’s mental development.
The answer to this question is yes but with an asterisk.
There are a few conditions or recommendations if you are going to have other people take part in your psychology sessions.
Firstly it’s normally a very good idea if you let your performance psychologist know that multiple people will be taking part in the session(s) beforehand.
Now there are a few different reasons for that, but one of the main ones is that irrespective of whether or not you are having face-to-face sessions or they’re taking place via video conference, there are a few things that we would do differently if we were delivering sessions to one individual compared to if we were delivering sessions to two or three people.
It’s All About The Client
The second recommendation is really just a reminder that we are trained to make sure that 100% of our energy and effort is put into helping only the client.
And so with that, it’s imperative to remember that the psychologist will be really assessing whether or not the other people in the session are helping that process or whether they’re making it harder.
The great news is the overwhelming majority of the time that other people do take part in the sessions, they help and often contribute very important insights.
Some of them choose to say nothing during the sessions and are purely there to observe, and that’s absolutely fine.
But from time to time, such contributions can have a negative impact on what we are trying to achieve which, of course, ultimately is to help the client to improve their mental toughness and overall well-being.
And so in these circumstances, it likely the psychologist will recommend after that session has completed that the following session be better off with simply the client and the sport and performance psychologist taking part.
If the above has not answered your question then fill in the form on our Contact Us page and one of our performance psychologists will give you a call back on the number provided.
