A few years ago, I was given a book entitled “The Gift of Therapy: An open letter to a new generation of therapists and their patients” by Irvin Yalom, full of interesting client case histories. The book raised questions in my mind about the value of therapy generally.
Therapy costs are not just financial. There are psychological costs of both having therapy and not having therapy. Therapy can be revelatory and transformational but also slow, evolutionary, requiring much processing time outside the sessions themselves. Not having therapy can leave us stuck in unhelpful patterns of behaviors and the danger of staying too long in therapy is therapy dependency, equally unhelpful.
Before embarking on therapy ask yourself a series of questions:
(1) What’s the problem? What do you really need? What are your ideal and realistic outcomes?
(2) What type of therapy would address your set of issues? Do a little research or explore my resources pages for more information.
(3) Self-Help and Self-development: is it enough to read around your issues and research the areas before taking further steps?
This could include general lifestyle issues that may not need a therapist, and you empower yourself to make the changes needed.
(4) Specific, brief solution focused therapy such as issues like smoking cessation, fears, phobias, problem solving, stress, personal boundary issues, etc that could be suitable for hypnotherapy and coaching approaches.
(5) Do you feel a need for therapy for issues like chronic grief, loss, trauma, PTSD etc where you may find longer term treatment, clinical support and medications beneficial?
(6) Do you feel that you may be on the autistic spectrum, have dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia or other neurodiverse conditions? A psychological assessment whether private or through the NHS can help define how your brain ticks. Therapy can support accepting and explore options to manage the results, to disclose to others or not. Learning work with the positives and constraints and adapt to such neural predispositions is a helpful way forward.
Therapy demands investing one’s time, psychological space, resources and a period of stability for new habits, change and acceptance to be established. The frequency and timing of therapy in client’s lives is also crucial: ready to be open to oneself, resilient enough to cope with triggers and extreme emotions, to simply be able to teach one’s former selves whatever was, was and letting go of pain and our versions of loved ones.
Therapy can be an interesting and rewarding journey, requiring an open mind and an open heart. If you have reached a period in your life when this feels right for you contact me seek out a therapist you feel you can work with :