“If Freud saw my therapy practice? He’d need a therapist.”
(Anonymous)
A Well-Reasoned Decision
To clarify, this is part two of a three-part series designed to help people candidly consider whether therapy might be useful for them at this time. If this is a decision you have already made, please forward this blog to someone who might appreciate it. Thanks!
Maybe NOT
Let me make this clear: I am not trying to talk anyone into therapy. I’ve heard numerous people over the years say with conviction, “Everyone needs a therapist.” You might be surprised to hear that I don’t agree. I do believe that we all need healing relationships, but therapy isn’t always the only way to get that.
That said, the advantage of going to a mental health professional, aside from that person’s specific training in the area you are working on, is that the therapist isn’t involved in your life outside of your therapeutic relationship. (This is also why our various codes of ethics are clear about therapists not having relationships with clients outside of the therapy relationship.) The therapist won’t personally gain or lose anything by the choices you make in your life.
In my last blog I mentioned what therapy isn’t, and explored the reality that human healing only takes place in the context of human relationships. I invited readers to take a sincere inventory of the things that don’t sit right about working with a therapist. Go get your list, and let's consider a few of the more common factors together.
What We’re Afraid Of
It’s said that we fear the things we fear because they are important. Instead of trying to not be afraid, let’s instead look at the important information that your fear might be telling you to sincerely consider.
People fear going to therapy for some really good reasons.
Vulnerability Risks
Telling our story to a stranger, before we ever know if they are someone we want to work with at that level can be daunting. How do we know that person won’t reinforce the messages that have harmed us? How do we know they will see and understand us? These are legitimate concerns. The last thing we want is to lay our most vulnerable selves out there and find ourselves rejected, misunderstood or harmed in the ways we’ve experienced already.
I will offer some tips on vetting a therapist below. In the meantime, I encourage you to listen to your fears and discern what you need to figure out about a potential therapist to see if they are safe enough to consider. Remember, you aren’t committing to anything by contacting them, or by engaging in a preliminary session.
Risking Change
While we don’t consciously want to stay stuck in painful emotional states, there is a risk in changing as well.Homeostasis is the natural human gravity toward whatever is familiar, even when it’s damaging.
Consider for example, someone who has been in a long-term relationship that is unhealthy. They may have articulated to their partner for many years that they need to go to couples counseling. One day the partner agrees and sets up an appointment. The first partner finds every reason not to go.
This is the thing they have wanted since forever! They may not even understand why they are sabotaging. Intuitively, the person likely knows that engaging in therapy will inevitably lead to change, and not just in their partner. They are likely to hear things that indicate they have work to do. What if they find they aren’t willing anymore?
Often the partner who originally suggests therapy goes ahead and does their work as best they can without the other person’s participation. They consciously welcome those challenges in therapy! However, because they have been doing their work and the other person hasn’t, they understand they may have “grown past” their partner. They know that couples counseling will likely show them that it’s time to leave the relationship. That can be terrifying, even when it is our healthiest choice.
Change is often frightening. In the absence of the stark light of therapy, we can pretend more easily that things that are not ok, are ok enough. Therapy will very likely challenge us to make difficult and courageous choices, stepping away from “the devil we do know,” out into an unsettling unknown.
Cultural Considerations
I’m going to cover this in more depth in the next blog. It needs at least that much space to cover it well. The short version, however, is that every therapist is not right for every person. If you have engaged authentically from your cultural norms, (ethnicity, gender identity, relationship constellation preference, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, faith assumptions and/or atheism/agnosticism, political persuasion, socioeconomic strata, beliefs about body acceptance, etc.,) and have experienced pain, rejection, discrimination or harm, it can be incredibly risky to take that chance on a therapist. What if the person seems just fine and you move forward only to find yourself being re-harmed by a clinician who can’t think outside of their own assumptions? Unfortunately, despite our training to respectfully hold the client’s frame of reference without superimposing our own biases, it does happen. It can be brutal.
Empathy
The number one agent of healing in therapy is not the training or experience of the therapist, their gender, age, cultural background or approach to therapy; It’s the relationship you have with the therapist. I learned this first as a client. (See the poem at the beginning of my last blog. The most effective therapist I ever had was not someone I would have expected to understand me. He was from an entirely different culture, different socioeconomic strata, different generation, different background. And he was a guy for crying out loud! What could he possibly know about what it’s like to struggle the way I have as a female? He had more in common with the people who have hurt me in my life than with me.
And yet.
Empathy goes a very long way. When a therapist listens carefully, owns up to their limited perspectives and lets clients expand their understanding of other people’s experiences, they grow an ability to be truly present with their clients.
Vetting
Before you choose a therapist, vet them as best as you can. Ask any and all of the questions you can think of that would help you figure out where this person is coming from and what they might be like. Read their blogs, watch their reels, look for any articles they may have written. If you can, get warm referrals from people who have worked with them personally. If you have negative feelings stemming from the way they answer or don’t answer your questions, they are not the right therapist for you. It is not only okay to decide someone isn’t the best fit; It’s imperative for you to get what you want from therapy.
Fire Us
If you start working with someone and it starts to feel squishy, or uncomfortable, talk with the therapist about it. The therapist most likely can’t read your mind. If you feel a need to talk about something but it feels too threatening to say it, tell that to the therapist. Work together on what would make it ok for you to say the things you need to say.
If that conversation doesn’t go in a way that feels safe to you, please fire your therapist. It’s not a good fit. On the other hand, if that conversation goes well, your therapeutic relationship will grow, and your therapy will become even more effective in getting you to your goals.
In order to be effective, therapy has to be a mutually respectful relationship. The therapist brings their part, and you bring yours. Ultimately, the therapist will never have enough information to know what choices serve you best. They can, however, help you figure out what you already know about your choices, and clear away the clutter that makes it hard to hear your own wisdom.
See how that necessarily involves a person outside of your head? All human healing happens in the context of others, one way or another.