Struggling? Maybe it’s time for therapy.
Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash
How do I know it’s time for therapy?
Life is hard in general, right? There is work, family, relationships, responsibilities that all need tending to. Everywhere we look, someone is talking about feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. You feel overwhelmed and stressed out. The world feels sort of unhinged, and that seems unsettling. Getting out of bed every morning feels like a never ending Sisyphean journey of thankless tasks. But does all that mean you need therapy??
Maybe.
There’s a continuum of thought on therapy, including everything from “Everyone needs therapy to better themselves” all the way to “Therapy is just paying someone to listen to your problems.” I’m not a fan of either of those extremes, even if the “Everyone needs therapy” perspective is great for my job security. As a therapist, the people I find I can be most helpful to are those who are experiencing pain and are in a mindspace to change, and that absolutely isn’t “Everyone.”
Let’s look at that “in pain” aspect - what are we talking about?
The pain that drives people into therapy sometimes looks like big life events: a death, an ending, a trauma, a life problem to solve. This is the “for the love of god, please help me feel better” pain. This is pain that feels too overwhelming to handle on your own. It has rocked your whole world, and everything feels different. Life is in chaos. You are crying, confused, untethered. You need help just carrying the weight of moving through the day.
Sometimes pain is something you have tolerated for a long time, and you just can’t handle anymore. This sometimes looks like depressed moods that won’t go away, anxiety that interferes with all aspects of life, or relationships that don’t feel fulfilling. You might feel stuck, you might feel confused, you might feel alone. You definitely are not feeling like you are “living your best life,” whatever that is. This is a tricky pain because it feels like a part of you, “just who I am,” and can make it hard to ask for help. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what the pain is and what you want to be different.
Then there is the pain that comes with transitions. So maybe you moved to a new city, or you took your first real job, or you just got married or had a baby. Maybe someone in your life got a life-changing diagnosis. Or you lost a job, or you got divorced, or your kids left home. Maybe you are the main care-taker for your aging parents. The sneaky thing about transition pain is that sometimes it masquerades as happy things, and sometimes feels like things we shouldn’t have bad feelings about (enter, guilt). What I can tell you about transition pain is that this pain is often linked to many other pains (like earlier traumas or neglect) that we tried to ignore at other points in our lives. These older pains also instill in us unhelpful but deep rooted beliefs and responses like “If I can keep everything around me functioning, then I’m okay,” or “If I am helping someone I won’t be alone.” See how these lead to our having less grace with transitions?
Okay, so we have identified the pain aspect of going to therapy. The other vital component is being ready for change.
How do you know if you are ready for change?
You are excessively tired of things going on as normal.
You are ready to look at the bigger picture - your patterns, your habits, the things that hold you back.
You have some hint of what you would like to be different.
You are ready to put some time and effort into this, and you understand if you want real change, you will likely need to get uncomfortable.
And, this is the big one my friends: you are doing it for yourself.
I have sat with clients who are coming because a parent told them to, or to appease a partner or because a friend thought it would help them. These can be great reasons to show up at first, but at some point, the shift needs to be to “I want this to be different.” Therapy is hard work: it involves looking at parts of yourself you might want to ignore, it involves sharing things that embarrass you with a virtual stranger, it means feeling those feelings we usually work really hard to NOT feel. We might be willing to learn and practice a new skill like expressing anger appropriately or calming our anxiety for someone else, but when change requires some deep self reflection and confrontation of patterns, my suggestion is that you want it for yourself.
What if you don’t know what you want, you just want all this to stop? That’s okay. We therapists are usually just fine with that ambiguity, and our first plan of action is to help you identify what that different life looks like, and what has been getting in the way. That new version of you then becomes our lighthouse that reminds us why we need to keep showing up, feeling feelings, and trying new things.
So do you feel like you have the right combination of “I’m in pain and I need to do it for me”? Great. We’ll talk more about how to find the right therapist for you in our next chat. You can even reach out for a 15 minute consultation to see how we might be able to help.
