Therapy warning: Might change your life
I have been hesitating on writing this, well, because… what if it’s not good enough?
Well, what I’ve learned from therapy is that sometimes the biggest risk is not taking any risk at all. So here goes.
I am a trainee at the moment, towards the end of an in depth training (5 years+) to become a fully qualified psychotherapist. So how did I end up here?
I am a convert to Psychotherapy. I resisted talk therapy until I was well into adulthood and it was the last thing I hadn’t tried. It felt like my back was against the wall and the wall, so-to-speak, was on fire🔥.
Someone told me when I was younger: “talk therapy doesn’t work” and I unfortunately took this to heart. This did not leave me with a lot of options, so I focused on many things including; self-improvement, coaching, hypnotherapy and spiritual development*. I thought - if I just focused hard enough on not thinking about myself and instead thinking of others, I would get better. None of this worked for me personally, and I have since learned that people sometimes internalise a feeling of being ‘bad’ sometimes known as ‘The Moral Defence’ which I have since written about here. This translated in adulthood to: ‘I feel bad, therefore, I must be bad’ and ‘if I am just good enough, if I just try hard enough, my problems will go away’.
They didn’t: without going into too much detail, things declined quite spectacularly! Truthfully, there were several points where I nearly didn’t make it. My ‘luck’ (or some might say ‘synchronicity’) changed when I was given the details of someone who was to become my weekly psychotherapist for the next 5 years. My health at this point was struggling (something that is sadly common for people navigating recovery from difficult circumstances) and it forced me to stop and seek support. I felt betrayed by my body - my resilience which had enabled me to survive difficult situations was no longer there to be called upon. Quite frankly, my body had been through enough, and was letting me know. As the classic book by Van der Kolk explains, my body had ‘kept the score’ and it was shouting pretty loudly!
Therapy was difficult and it got worse before it got better. My therapist sat with me through emotional rollercoasters, anger, and often severe pain. However, alongside the difficult moments, there were also times when I laughed so hard I cried and I often came out feeling more ‘sane’ with a completely different perspective on situations (something therapists call ‘re-framing’). Once I stabilised in therapy, we began the painstaking work of rebuilding. Although, I had little-to-no insight to this at the time. There were times where I felt so challenged that I left thinking; ‘I will not go back’. This is where I had another fortunate turn in my story – at the same time as getting into therapy I met someone who offered a great deal of unwavering support. I was privileged they would make an effort to pick me up from sessions and make sure I was ok, without undermining any of the important work my therapist was doing.
I can’t pin point exactly when things started improving for me but; they did. I have also learned that that this can be quite normal for therapy – rather than a movie where there is breakthrough after breakthrough each week, it felt more like weeks, even months of very little happening and then there would be a big shift and I would suddenly realise how far I had come. A new confidence emerged together with a different sense of self, which I now realise forms the basis of my future. I began to be able to cope longer between sessions. Most importantly, I began to hold the learning in therapy within myself, meaning I could navigate my life better even when not in contact with my therapist. My persistent state of panic decreased, I felt different and most strikingly, I now wanted to live.
I had to admit I was wrong. Therapy can work for people, however, it certainly was not an easy process. Therapy gave me a new sense of self for which I could go forward and create a different ending from the difficult path I found myself on. I still choose to go to therapy - something that is also required by my in depth experiential training - and I of course still have challenges, but with the right support my life feels and looks completely different.
From this, I realised that I could perhaps help someone else walk through this transformative process leading to me opening my own practice here in Salisbury, Wiltshire. This is how I got to where I am now since I first stepped, trembling, though those doors. Maybe therapy can work for you too.
One of the biggest risks of therapy is that you might end up with a life that you never imagined was possible for you.
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*Please note that this does not mean these alternative approaches mentioned are not a solution for some people, it is just they did not work for me personally.