A good therapist helps you process and ‘digest’ emotional conflicts that might feel overwhelming to face on your own. We’re actually called ‘shrinks’ because we make problems shrink to feel smaller and easier to manage, so they don’t take up so much mental space and energy in our lives. Finding your personal power and a sense of agency (the ability to do something about your problems) can help you regain self-confidence and has a ripple effect in our lives. The smallest change in a positive direction can be appreciated to help push your momentum towards bigger changes.
How is therapy different from journaling or self-affirmations?
Free-flow journaling, keeping a gratitude journal and saying daily positive affirmations may be a part of your process and some find them useful for self-reflection and as an outlet for strong emotions, but an unbiased outside view can be more objective and helps to avoid an ‘echo chamber’ of sorts, where you write or say something that confirms your own, often negative or unrealistic, thoughts and beliefs about ourselves and about the world. Therefore, making it sound more true - negative spirals or a vicious cycle of overthinking can be destructive to our self-esteem and cause anxiety. Some also have difficulties putting their thoughts into words and may need help finding ways to express themselves.
Bouncing these thoughts and ideas off someone with a keen sense of the details, who is tuning in to your complex emotional inner world and who is there to accompany you on this journey of self discovery, can provide a fresh perspective that you may have been missing. This can be a truly transformative experience.
Consider this - in our professional lives, we wouldn’t set up and start running a business or even a project without running the ideas by someone first to get insight, especially if that person is trained specifically in that area. So, why would we do this when creating our lives? A professional perspective gives valuable insight into how your most important project (yourself) can run smoothly, so to speak.
In therapy the space and time is set aside for you and used to learn from yourself and grow within yourself. Sometimes you are discovering and clarifying events to make better sense of them, sometimes you are creating who you are and even deciding who you want to be.
Fears are grappled with and become more easily understood. Emotional understanding of the self may be refined and clarified, which can bring a sense of calmness. There can be growing pains and tough days, but the clarity through the clouds is so worth the work and effort. Resilience is learned and healing happens with the right therapist for you.
A therapist may be exactly what you needed or what you were looking for, or they may be just good enough to help you through the hard times or to find some clarity. Sometimes the therapist you think will be perfect for you can end up being a disappointment and the one you weren’t so sure about becomes the one you grow with the most. The key is to find the right therapist for you. Look for someone you can feel comfortable talking to and eventually grow to trust them.
Studies have shown that it matters less what form or approach your therapist takes. What is more important is the relationship and trust between a therapist and client that makes for a good environment to explore and overcome difficulties in order to make real change.
If you are struggling to find a therapist and would like some guidance on how to get started, feel free to contact me for a free consultation and we can discuss different methods and styles of therapy to help give you some direction in your search. There is no obligation to choose me as your therapist and I would be pleased to help you find the counsellor that is right for you.