I am a huge fan of therapy. I think it’s something that most people would very much benefit from at least once in their lives, providing they find a therapist that clicks with them. That being said though, there’s something important that most therapists won’t tell you.
So you’ve decided you want to change yourself and it’s time for therapy. Well, as you flip through the numerous options of your first three google search pages, there’s something you should hear so that you may consider it.
I’ve covered earlier that to sustain a healthy life and habits, you have to want to change. That is the first step. I have mentioned that you have to learn your own reasons for doing so as you go through your recovery and also that you have to adopt healthier mindsets for yourself. (To read more about this, you can go over to my post Therapy and Wanting to Change.) If you think this is all possible within due time, then you are certainly ready for the road to recovery, even if it isn’t feasible to find all these things by the day’s end.
So what more is needed? Well, there’s a question first that I must ask. Why are you going to therapy? This is a different question than “why do you want to get well?”. This question, I find often has one answer out of a few. Let’s explore some common answers to this “why are you going to therapy?”
1. “I am going to therapy because my mother/partner/friend/whoever thinks I need to”
2. “I am going to therapy because I like the idea of having a place to talk where I will be listened to”
3. “I am going to therapy because I feel like it’s what I should do”
4. “I’m going to therapy because I want to get well”.
If you’re honest with yourself, at least one of these responses will probably resonate with you if you are considering therapy. None of them are wrong, and none of them are perfect. Let’s dig a little deeper into these responses and see the pros and cons of each.
“I am going to therapy because so-and-so thinks I need to” will probably get you as far as to the therapy appointment. If this is your only reason of going to therapy, you might have decent attendance, but don’t expect to get anything more out of it. You don’t learn by sitting in a room with one too many throw pillows staring at a heavily college educated individual. And if you’re not learning, then you can’t expect to change either. If you’re going to therapy because someone else wants you to, you are not opening to the full experience.
If you decide you are going to therapy for a safe place to talk and be heard, you are probably less hesitant than someone who is going just because someone else wants them to. You want to talk to someone. So when you go into your appointment you will probably be open to doing just that, talking. This is good.
If you don’t open up during therapy about your life and your problems, you won’t be able to start working through them. Yet, if all you do is talk about your problems, you can go into a spiral of problem-seeking. Not solution seeking, problem seeking. While it feels good to be heard, if therapy is just your place to complain about your life then you will be missing out on most of the benefits therapy has to offer!
“I am going to therapy because it’s what I think I should do”. Ooh, that hurts. This one is similar to the first, but sometimes there isn’t a defined person who is telling you to do something, and instead it is your inner voice, policing you. While some things are important, for the most part it is not good to do things simply because we feel we should. If we are motivated by wanting to be approved of solely or to do the “good thing”, our self-deprecating motivation tends to cloud our experience.
For example, if you choose to not drink anymore because you want to live a sober life, it can be very empowering. However if you’re doing it because you think you’re a drunk and you hate that about yourself, not drinking can seem much more like an inconvenience than an empowerment. If you start from the place of believing you are wrong and bad, you often feel you don’t deserve to live the life of a good person, you don’t deserve the rejuvenating benefits of healthy habits. Now this is mostly subconscious, but nevertheless it can really trip you up!
Finally, the last answer I’ve listed is, “ I want to begin therapy because I want to get better.” It may surprise some that I have listed this among other problematic answers, and I want it to be noted that there is no perfect answer, and no “right” reason to want to go to therapy. However, even wanting to go to therapy to get better (which is supposedly the point of going to therapy in the first place), can be problematic.
If you’re looking to recover, therapy can be a great tool! That doesn’t mean it is the only tool, and it also doesn’t mean it is the best tool for you. In some situations there are important things that need to be done before or during therapy to be successful making a change.
We have all seen those people who have been in therapy for years, seemingly unchanged or even worse off than when they began! I don’t know about you, but I didn’t ever want to be one of them. So let me save you years in both time and money and give you what I call my good-to-go checklist. You could also call it the “Are you sure it’s time for therapy?” Checklist.
1.Do you want to get better?
2. Are you willing to open up about what you’re thinking and feeling to a third party?
3. Do you have insurance or other means of payment for this service?
4. Is your problem due to a temporary situation that you cannot change?
I would like to speak more about that last one. Sometimes, one of your major stressors is something in your life, like say an abusive partner. If you have an abusive partner, you will not be able to just go to therapy and have everything be fine because you are working on yourself. No. You must find a way out of the abuse, and then is the time for you to seek out therapy to recover from the trauma. That isn’t to say that if you have a stressor you cannot change you will not be able to benefit from therapy at all, however if you are looking to change your life, then therapy must be coupled with actions that you take. If you will not or cannot leave the abuse, all therapy can offer you is coping skills and a safe place to talk about your feelings.
Remember too that therapists are mandatory reporters, and if they think a crime is going on they will report it. If you are in such a dire situation, therapy is little more than a band-aid, and instead of spending time, effort and money on therapy, you would move faster toward a safe and healthy life by making changes to your life. Leaving a partner who is abusive, a job that is illegal, so on and so forth. These are the limitations of therapy. Therapy cannot save you. It is just another tool that you can use to save yourself.
