Last week, I took you through some common questions I’ve received about the process of therapy—finding a therapist, what a session is like, etc. Today, I wanted to follow up with some of the things I’ve learned during my time in therapy, in the hopes that it will clarify what you can expect from therapy if you choose to go. However, I do want to state that this is my own personal experience—YMMV and all that.

1. The most important thing is finding the right therapist for you.

The main piece of advice anyone will give about therapy is that you have to find the therapist that is right for you. This process? It’s not always easy. And it can be so discouraging to spend weeks or months with a therapist and realize you’re not clicking with them. I was lucky enough to connect with my current therapist right away, and she was the first one I saw when I decided to go back to therapy (after a failed attempt in 2012). But this is the most important thing to remember—if you aren’t connecting with your therapist, you may need to break up with them and find someone new. You will find the right one, but it may take several attempts. But it’s so damn worth it when you do find the right one. I’d also caution people to give it a few sessions, as you may not click with your therapist right off the bat. It may take several sessions to find that rapport.

2. Therapy is not a quick fix.

While I saw incremental progress with my mental health in the beginning of my therapy journey, it wasn’t until an entire year had passed that I finally felt like I was at a place of stability with my mental health. I started noticing that the stuff that used to make me downward-spiral wasn’t phasing me as much, because I was able to take the techniques my therapist taught me to challenge my thoughts. Being able to challenge these highly emotional, not-based-in-any-sort-of-reality thoughts has been a long, hard journey; it took me over a year to finally start to shift my thinking. A year of sitting in my therapist’s office, talking through yet another scenario that was causing me anxiety, and learning how to break out of the cycle of downward spiraling. I didn’t know it was going to take me such a long time, but I also didn’t know I could get to the place I am today. I had no idea that I could feel so in control of my own thoughts and mental health. So, don’t go into therapy thinking you’ll get a quick fix. It’s all about baby steps and incremental progress and breaking yourself down little by little to build yourself back up again.

3. Be prepared to hear hard truths.

I asked on Instagram if any therapy veterans had advice that I could include in this post, and I loved this sage piece of wisdom from a friend. Your therapist is not there to be your friend. They are not there to coddle you. They are there to help you find yourself again. Whether that’s learning how to cope with your anxiety, heal from a traumatic event, or set boundaries with your relationships, you’re going to have to deal with hard truths. Therapy is truly about ripping yourself wide open and letting a stranger poke inside your brain and heart, bringing forth a flurry of difficult emotions that you may not be prepared to deal with. But it’s worth going through this painful process. Hiding from hard truths isn’t helping us; it’s only allowing us to stay stuck and mired in our own anxieties.

4. You don’t need to be actively in crisis to benefit from therapy.

Therapy is not just for people who have anxiety, depression, or another mental illness. It’s not just for people who are healing from a traumatic event or going through a difficult season of life (death of a loved one, a breakup, etc.) You don’t have to be actively in crisis. If you feel generally okay on a day-to-day basis, but want to talk with someone about life and all the challenges it can bring (tricky in-law situations, stressful work days, etc.), therapy is beneficial.  I truly don’t believe someone ever “graduates” from therapy; we may not need to go regularly, but we will all need it through different seasons of our lives. As my mental health challenges have lessened, I have toyed with the idea of ending my therapy sessions. But I also really love that I get to spend an hour just chatting about my life with my therapist and getting some feedback about other life happenings—the stuff I couldn’t talk about when my anxiety struggles took precedence. Also, I want to state here that I recognize what a privileged statement it is to say that you can go to therapy even when things are going smoothly. I know how inaccessible therapy is for so many individuals, and I wish there was a better solution.

5. You will learn how to open up in ways you never anticipated.

Therapy was probably my least-favorite thing to do when I started my sessions. I had so much anxiety leading up to each session and I finally discovered what was making me so anxious—talking! I am not a talker by nature (ask anyone who knows me IRL, lol) and opening up is even more difficult. I was just not looking forward to spending an hour talking about myself and my issues. It took a while for me to get used to the talking part of talk therapy, but once I did, I realized how wonderful it is! A whole hour to talk about me. A whole hour to have a no-holds-barred conversation with an impartial person, in which I don’t have to worry about offending my therapist or scaring her away. In my sessions, I have opened up about so many topics that, before therapy, were just conversations I had in my head (and, in many cases, felt shame about). Now, I get to have these conversations with another person, someone who is trained to help me work through the emotions surrounding these topics and clarify my feelings about them. Therapy has taught me how to open up, how to express my emotions (something that is very hard for people who have traumatic childhoods like I did), and how to be honest about my experience. It’s not a simple, linear process—I still have trouble being fully honest with my therapist and not sugarcoating my emotions. But I’ve grown leaps and bounds in learning how to recognize my emotions, let my feelings have their moments, and open up in ways I never could before.

I’ve been pretty vocal in the last few months, and especially in my end-of-year recaps, about my love for therapy. It has changed my life, quite honestly. When I started therapy, I felt like I was drowning in my spiraling thoughts and crippling anxiety. And while therapy wasn’t this quick fix (it took at least a year to start seeing the benefits of therapy), I’m really glad I didn’t give up, kept showing up even when it was hard and/or felt pointless, and was committed to telling the truth even when it was painful.

A lovely blog reader reached out to me a few weeks ago to ask if I could write a “how to” post about therapy. She’s considering starting therapy and asked for any tips I could give about what to expect. And you know me—I am more than happy to give advice about therapy. After her email, I asked Instagram if they had any specific questions about therapy and got a handful of responses, which helped me put together this post. This post is going to break down the process of therapy—what to expect before you go, during your session, and after your session. I’m going to write a follow-up post next week with some extra tips and advice. (I also asked Instagram for their best therapy advice, which I’ll be adding to that post.)

Before You Go

> How do you determine that you need to go to therapy? This might seem like a simple question, but it was one that took me years to answer. I was so intimidated by the process of therapy and overwhelmed by the steps to find a therapist that it took me years and years to finally make it happen. I convinced myself that I didn’t need it because I just had a “little bit of anxiety” and a “few bouts of depression.” Honestly, though, everyone can benefit from therapy. Even those supposed “emotionally stable” people. It’s useful for everyone. If you’re thinking about going to therapy, that’s a good sign that you should go to therapy. Full stop.

> How do you find a therapist? Finding a therapist is the trickiest part of the process. It involves a lot of online research, submitting queries, making calls, and leaving messages. And for people struggling, this often feels incredibly overwhelming.

When I was searching for a therapist in mid-2018, I told myself I just needed to reach out to two therapists a week—that felt doable to me. At first, I searched the Psychology Today site and did some simple Google searches for therapists around me, but I had the most success at going to the “find a doctor” feature on my health insurance’s website. I filtered my results to women psychologists who were accepting new patients and started working my way down the list. I called a few offices who never returned my calls. Others weren’t accepting new patients. And then I called my current therapist and voila! Just like that: an appointment.

> What happens before the first session? So, you’ve found a therapist, called the office, and left a message. The therapist will (hopefully!) call you back within 24-48 hours and schedule a time to have a complimentary 15-minute phone chat. This chat is nothing to get nervous about—the therapist simply wants to learn about why you’re seeking therapy to make sure he or she is the right fit for you. (Believe me, I was a bumbling, stumbling idiot when I spoke to my current therapist during this chat.)

My therapist also sent me a questionnaire to fill out that covered a whole range of topics. I really loved this because it allowed me to write out my thoughts about certain things I was experiencing. You may or may not be required to do the same.

During Your Session

> What does a typical therapy session look like? Do you go in with a specific idea of what you want to talk about? Obviously, I’m going to be speaking about my personal experience here. I’ve only been to one other therapist and the experience was completely different. My sessions begin with a mood check-in. We simply discuss how my anxiety levels have been lately and what my moods have been like, which is often a jumping-off point for other topics. (For example, if my anxiety has been particularly bad, we unpack what could be causing that.)

My therapist guides the majority of the conversation and we try to cover all the basics about my life: family, work, dating, and friends. We also discuss my social life, since I struggle mightily with making plans and reaching out.

I come to each session with an idea of what I want to discuss. I’ll typically jot down notes in my planner throughout the week as certain thoughts come to me. Before each session, I’ll do a little journaling to figure out how I’m feeling and what I want to talk about.

> Does the therapist have prompts to guide the conversation or do you just talk the whole time? I think the talking part of talk therapy can be incredibly intimidating. I know it was for me! I am not used to talking for such a long period of time—and definitely not about myself and my issues!—so it was an adjustment for me. The way a session goes is highly personal. For some people, they may just sit right down in the therapist’s office and start chatting away. For me, it’s different.

I still remember when I told my therapist, this was probably during my third or fourth session, that I had a lot of anxiety about therapy because I wanted to be sure I had enough “issues” to fill out the 45-minute time block. She was quick to assure me that I never had to worry about that—and she was right. Even the months when I come in thinking I don’t have anything to say, within minutes, I’m chattering away about an issue she helped me unearth from my psyche.

So, yes, the therapist should be able to guide the session, but he or she should also know how to let you talk and take control of the conversation. My therapist knows when to let me talk, when to ask questions to probe deeper into an issue, and when to ask a guided question that could lead us down an entirely different road.

After Therapy

> How do you decide how often you’ll go to therapy? This is entirely dependent on you and your therapist. (And your budget, unfortunately.) Generally, in the beginning, you’ll want to go weekly or biweekly. I started by going every other week and now I go every four weeks.

> How do you make sure you get the most out of each session? My therapist has provided me with techniques to practice and worksheets to help me through particularly tricky issues. I also try to journal or go for a long walk after my session to process the session. Therapy is hard, emotional work and you want to give yourself the space to decompress once the session is over.

I really hope this was helpful for those seeking therapy! And stay tuned for tips about therapy, including how to find the right fit for you.