Dear Poppyxo:

Best for you to offer a person/ future client one little piece of an assignment, you can call it “homework.” Just one exercise, small, simple to understand, requiring the minimum expenditure of time and energy, something you can have them do in the session with you and then do again at home, practice just that one thing.

The less you assign a person, the less you suggest they do; and the simpler your suggestion, the more likely the person will follow up on it, practice it.

Offer one technique, not two, just one, and package it for the person in the most palatable way possible: easy, simple, fast.

Oh, and as a future therapist, do cultivate that endless, sometimes excruciating amount of patience that you will need and which will serve you well.

anita