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.
Thank you so much for being so open about this!
The “right fit” part seems so hard to achieve. I went to therapy for a few months, a few years ago. I do NOT think I had a good rapport with my therapist, but it was a short relationship… so maybe it could have developed into something more had we had more time together?
This is such a great post (as is your first post on therapy). It has been many years since I’ve seen a therapist — I went when I was a teenager as a result of some family turmoil — but I do remember it being very useful for me. I expect it’s something I will return to one day (active crisis or not).
I’m glad therapy has been doing some good things for you, girl 🙂
I’m so glad you’ve found a great therapist. I think that is probably one of the hardest parts about therapy. It can take time to find the right person and it would be hard to keep trying over and over again if you aren’t with someone who is the right fit.
“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.”
THIS!
The only caveat I would add is that therapy can be expensive, if you don’t have a diagnosis and health insurance doesn’t cover anything. However, there are “non-profit” groups that provide counseling on a sliding scale and they’ll work with your financial situation to accommodate you!