Therapy; is it worth it?
When it comes to seeking therapy it can feel scary to sit in a room with a stranger and be expected to share with them your deepest darkest secrets. The reality is a therapy session is about you, it’s your time and an opportunity to share your thoughts or feelings in a safe space that is non-judgemental. While each individual may have a different goal they may wish to achieve in therapy, there are some overarching benefits you can gain through the process.
01. Gaining Self-awareness:
The definition of self-awareness is the ability to reflect on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with your inner standards. You may be wondering if this is important. Isn’t it exhausting to constantly reflect? The reality is yes, sometimes it can be exhausting, but it also allows you to have an opportunity to change your unwanted behaviours for the better. You can learn to break out of any automatic habits that are no longer serving you when you chat about them in therapy.
02. Processing your emotions:
Sometimes negative emotions can feel uncomfortable or painful and it’s easy to want to suppress them. However, over time when we don’t process our emotions in a healthy way, we can sometimes become numb to them or experience really intense emotions. Often your emotions are there to tell your something, that you’re upset, angry, or happy about a situation. Suppressing your emotions till you no longer feel them often impacts not just the negative emotions, but also stops you from experiencing the positive ones. Having a safe space to experience or talk about better ways to regulate your emotions will allow you a better understanding of how you might feel about things.
03. Healing from trauma:
Experiencing a traumatic incident in life can feel very lonely, and painful and it’s often something we carry around with us. It can sometimes impact the way we live our lives and how we interact with the world. It can sometimes be debilitating when trauma carries itself in the body and comes back up unexpectedly. Healing from it will look different for everyone and exploring it in a safe environment can be freeing.
04. Building confidence:
For some people, having confidence in themselves or high self-esteem doesn’t come naturally. There may be various reasons as to why you might not believe in yourself. Our confidence is often linked with our perception of ourselves which will influence how we live our lives, e.g the way we study, work or connect with others. Building your confidence back up can improve the areas in your life where you may find yourself struggling a bit. Recognise what your internal dialogue may be saying and if it’s playing a role in impacting your confidence.
05. Build resilience:
Resilience is often that quality you hear people mention they admire in others but what does it really mean? The dictionary definition of it is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. You may be wondering well, what does that look like in practice? The reality is everyone has a different level of adversity they can handle before they start to feel like they’re falling apart. Following on from the previous benefit of healing from your trauma, your resilience can often feel very low when you haven’t had the chance to process the terrible things that may have happened in your life. A little bit of a knock-on effect in therapy is by healing from one thing, a side benefit is your resilience can start to increase and you’re able to manage adversity better.
06. Gain insights:
We spend a lot of time in our heads, which means it can sometimes feel difficult to know what are facts and what is our mind spiraling. We can also be limited in the perspective we see, speaking with a therapist can often provide you with insight you haven’t considered before. Once a rapport has been built, a therapist may start to challenge some of the thoughts your mind has, asking you to consider other points of view. This can often provide a big turning point for a lot of clients, seeing things from a perspective they have never considered before. Our mind can do a wonderful job of convincing itself to believe what it wants to.
The question of this post still stands, is therapy worth it? Taking into consideration all the benefits discussed only you can make that decision. At the end of the day, you will get out of therapy as much as you put in. Being open-minded about the process will be where you see the most results. While I believe therapy is of great benefit, I can’t speak for everyone. If you’re ready to take the leap into this journey of self discovery, reach out to us today for an appointment.
