Therapy is a change enterprise. When you enter therapy, you are signing up for change. Unlike the Hollywood movie version, therapy won’t solve all your problems. Life will always present problems. Problems invite you to expand and grow, or to stagnate and contract. Therapy can help you learn from the challenges inherent in human life. You can learn to hold your challenges with a lightness, or a kindness, or an acceptance of the inevitability of loss and change. Everyone has times of sadness, grief, and pain. Therapy can help you move through those hard times so that you don’t get stuck in childhood patters of victimization, rumination, or fixation. Therapy can help you move through life with more flexibility and self-acceptance.
Therapy gives you tools to identify the major stressors in your life, and teaches you ways to reduce that stress. You can recognize the signs of rising stress and identify ongoing dysregulation in your nervous system. When you can identify what is happening inside (fight or flight, feeling numb or shut down, compulsively people pleasing) you can apply strategies to calm down, to wake and shake up, or to have boundaries with the people in your life you currently feel you must please.
A therapeutic relationship that facilitates trust, openness, and compassionate inquiry creates the conditions for nonjudgmental self-examination. Long ago you may have learned to avoid looking at yourself because of expectations that you must be perfect, or that life should be problem free, or that happiness is the only acceptable emotion. These false and damaging beliefs are reinforced continually by the media and the wider culture. Real change is created by having honest conversations in a safe and accepting space with a therapist who wants to see the authentic you, not the perfected you (always a false front). A skilled therapist is one who accepts her/his own flaws, mistakes, and misjudgments and sees them as part of this business of being human. You are perfectly imperfect, and when you can really take that in, you can learn to see yourself with the eyes of love.
A kind and accepting therapist helps you grow from the challenges inherent in facing yourself and your choices. Learning how to pay attention to your inner chatter can determine if you have a friendly orientation to yourself –especially during hard times. Most clients do not have this skill—loving self-acceptance–when they begin therapy. Through the alchemy of the therapeutic relationship, the orientation to self becomes kinder, gentler, less critical. This makes a surprising difference in how it feels to explore what you have long avoided. You can learn to offer yourself compassion or kindness instead of self-rejection and self-criticism when big difficulties arise–which they do in every human life.
Sometimes people seek therapy because they need their loved ones to be different. You can only change what you control, which is your thoughts, emotions, behaviors, etc. In therapy you can learn to have boundaries with loved ones so you are protected from what you can’t control.
A good therapist creates a safe space to share what may have never been shared before. Therapists must maintain confidentiality so sharing can relieve the burdens of carrying your childhood secrets alone. A therapist can help you appreciate your courage or perseverance and accept your human imperfections, as they model accepting theirs.
The biggest obstacle to change in therapy is avoidance. Avoidance is often learned in childhood because there wasn’t enough emotional safety to allow or admit mistakes. Blaming others for your feelings or behaviors, telling yourself stories (“I have to be perfect”), inflating risk and deflating rewards; the avoidance pathways wind through addictions, compulsions, depressions, panic attacks, ad infinitum. There are as many ways to avoid as there are personality types. But there is only one result of avoidance: failure to thrive. What you avoid you cannot heal.
As a therapist who strives to be ‘good enough’, I will be patient with your pace of change, because speed is not the requirement. Some changes may happen quite quickly, others may happen slowly and imperceptibly, perhaps even glacially. I will talk about your progress and your strengths. I have seen that change is possible, and with change comes more days of feeling better, of expanding possibilities, of hopefulness instead of dread.
I can’t do this alone. So then, what is required of the you, the client, in this change enterprise?
The first requirement is to show up. Show up for your scheduled appointments, on time and ready. This is the most basic requirement because everything rests on this. The therapeutic relationship cannot be constructed by “on again, off again” attendance. Many therapists will have a requirement that you attend; you may have to pay a penalty if you cancel last minute. These policies are put in place not to punish, but to encourage you to show up.
The second requirement is to be as honest as possible. You may not know the motivations behind your difficulties, but you know a lot more than your therapist. Striving to be honest even if you think it paints you in a ‘bad light’ is the most helpful attitude you can have. If something happened that is just too painful or shaming to talk about, tell your therapist “I am having a hard time sharing this with you, I’m afraid you will judge me”. That is honest communication!
I will not judge you: you can talk about challenges with substances, or difficult parenting moments, or times of rage, shame and depression. I cannot compel you to share those difficult moments with me. I can tell you that when you are ready to take that risk, you will be rewarded by the experience of being seen—and not judged– in your vulnerability. That is one of the greatest powers of therapy, to heal the shame about these very human experiences, giving yourself much deserved forgiveness. Perfection is never the goal of therapy.
The third requirement is to allow yourself a learning curve. There is a lot to learn when you start therapy, and if you become impatient that you don’t already know everything, you won’t have the emotional space to practice new ways of being with yourself and the world. It is a new language: be willing to make mistakes and allow moments of uncertainty because everyone gets to be a beginner when starting therapy.
Finally, understand that the goal of therapy is not to take away your problems. The goal of therapy is to help you learn to accept problems as part of life, to hold them in ways that support your growth instead of ways that demand self judgement and self-rejection. Therapy helps you love yourself and your path as it is, not as it ‘should’ be. The kindness and support you offer yourself allows you to love others as themselves, not as you wish them to be.