Therapy is hard work.
This might sound like a strange statement for a psychology clinic to be making, but we think it’s best to be upfront about this reality.
By being transparent, our clients can go into the process with their eyes wide open and realistic expectations about how therapy might unfold.
Here are some of the reasons why we think therapy is hard…
Therapists don’t give you the answers
But they do help you find your own. Which is much more empowering in the long run. When we’re overwhelmed or struggling we sometimes crave other people telling us what to do. It’s hard work wading your way through uncertainty and potential solutions or paths you could take, but an effective therapist will give you the tools to make your own decisions, now and into the future.
Therapy can involve facing into painful thoughts and feelings
In many ways, it’s easier to keep our head in the sand and block out painful thoughts and feelings. In the long run though, pushing things down can lead to depression, anxiety, isolation, a sense of emptiness and other mental health challenges. Facing into hidden and sometimes shameful parts of ourselves can open up alternative ways of coping and carve the way for new, more helpful patterns in our lives.
“Pain is unrelenting. It will get our attention. Despite our attempts to drown it in addiction, to physically beat it out of one another, to suffocate it with success and material trappings, or to strangle it with our hate, pain will find a way to make itself known.
Pain will subside only when we acknowledge it and care for it. Addressing it with love and compassion would take only a minuscule percentage of the energy it takes to fight it, but approaching pain head-on is terrifying. Most of us were not taught how to recognise pain, name it, and be with it. Our families and culture believed that the vulnerability that it takes to acknowledge pain was weakness, so we were taught anger, range and denial instead. But what we now know is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain”.
~ Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
Progress is rarely linear and takes time
When clients first come to therapy understandably they’re eager to feel better and want to make progress as quickly as possible. This makes sense of course, but it’s also important to pace yourself, particularly if trauma underpins some of the symptoms you are experiencing.
At times therapy can feel exhausting because sometimes we need to take a few steps back before we feel ready or able to take steps forward. This is the frustrating reality of change. Your therapist can equip you with new ways of coping for the times when you feel yourself slipping backwards. They can also help you to stay hopeful and motivated to keep moving forward, despite the ups and downs that come with making positive changes in your life.
It’s human to resist change
While our conscious mind might want to change, our unconscious mind might have other ideas. Sigmund Freud, the grandfather of psychology, referred to this as “resistance”. This can sometimes show up in therapy (or in our regular lives) as self-sabotaging behaviours. We might come late to therapy, cancel last minute or spend our session talking about things that aren’t really at the heart of why we’re seeking support. Part of the role of a therapist is to keep an eye out for signs that you might accidentally be getting in the way of yourself and to gently help you to get back on track.
For therapy to be effective, it needs to be an active process
Therapy is so much more than coming to see your therapist once week, fortnight or month. Some people might even say that’s the easy part (although others would thoroughly disagree!). For real change to occur, reflection and action needs to happen outside of therapy too. Depending on how you work with your therapist, this might look like homework, such a monitoring your thoughts or practising new ways of coping with your emotions. Or it might be less structured or obvious work like practising tuning into your body or noticing what triggers shifts in your mood or thinking.
It can take time to find a therapist who feels right for you
Some people are lucky and land on the right therapist first go. For others, it can take time to find someone who they gel with. This can be a time-consuming and disheartening process, but once you find a therapist who really gets you, it’s well worth the effort.
Therapy can involve feeling the feelings others haven’t been able to
Clients can sometimes come to therapy not only because of their own history, but the history and experiences of their family of origin. This type of work can be challenging, because it can feel like you are carrying the weight of your family on your shoulders. You might even be on the receiving end of criticism or judgement for coming to therapy and feel you need to keep it a secret. Cycle breaking can be complex and painful work, but well worth the effort in terms of the way it can improve your mental health, relationships and satisfaction with life.
“Pain travels through family lines until someone is ready to feel it themselves. By going through the agony of healing, you no longer pass the poison chalice onto the generations that follow”.
~ Stephi Wagner
We don’t shy away from the fact that therapy can at times be hard going. But with the right therapist by your side, we believe the rewards of therapy can be big and life changing.
