The decision to start therapy can be intimidating. For most individuals, there are some preconceived ideas about what therapy will entail and what therapists are like. And, lets be honest, the media rarely paints an accurate picture of the therapy process.
GETTING STARTED
There are a couple of points to consider in getting started in the therapy process. First, engaging fully in the therapy process is important. This is also hard to do. Change is hard. Awareness is hard. Rigorous honesty is hard. And these are all pivotal parts of engaging fully in therapy. Sometimes things can feel like they're getting worse before they get better. As a client, you are not just paying to be listened to and validated. Your therapist is not a paid friend. While being listened to is an important part of the therapy process, listening alone will not affect the change most clients are seeking. Therapists have masters and doctorate degrees, they receive specialized training and certification. Therapists have spent years studying human behavior, the process of change, relationship dynamics, conflict resolution, attachment and trauma wounds, addiction and communication. It will be important for you to find a therapist who you can have a connection with, who stays current with their training and expertise and who you can trust to walk you through the difficult and sometimes painful pathways of healing and self exploration. Therapy is an art. It's a lot more than just telling people what to do or what not to do. The therapists who are good at what they do have spent time mastering the art of helping clients own their journey. Therapists are trained to meet you where you are and work to facilitate insight and create an environment for growth and healing.
Therapy can be expensive, ranging anywhere from $80-$200 for a 50 minute session. It's an investment and you should get a return on your investment. However, this will take time. Remember there are other things that we value that are expensive that we don't question spending money on, such as an attorney, a dentist or medication. Therapy is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. It's an investment in you.
DOING THE WORK
There are words and phrases in therapy that you will become familiar with. These include sit with that, do the work, set and maintain healthy boundaries, projection, trauma bonds, enmeshment, living within limits, seek consultation, lean in, notice that and the list goes on. Whether we are talking mind, body or spirit, healing is not pleasant and it rarely feels good. This is important to remember as you embark on this journey.
When my younger brother was 18 years old, he and a couple of friends were playing with fire one night. It was the week between Christmas and New Years and was a continuation of something that had started earlier that Summer, as they tried to rid the basketball pole of a wasp nest. He was at a friends house, whose parents were not home at the time. They were video taping the lighting of various objects on fire and watching, mesmerized as these items would burn. As can happen with teens who believe they are invincible, they kept upping the ante and added gasoline to the mix in order to maximize the effect. Unbeknownst to my brother, as he was dousing something with alcohol prior to lighting it on fire, the gasoline was also dripping onto his clothing. My mom received a phone call a few minutes later from my brother asking her to pick him up and take him to the Emergency Room.
My husband and I arrived at the hospital about an hour later and spent the next week making daily trips to the burn unit to visit with my brother. The first night seemed the worst. He was in so much pain, it was something you could feel as you entered the room. Slowly over the next few days, we saw gradual progress: he would sit up, talk, open his eyes, make a joke. We thought these were all good signs of healing. The doctors however, informed the family not to put any stock in these improvements. That the focus at this time was to get him strong enough for skin graft surgery. That once he was stable enough for surgery, the surgery would put any progress we were witnessing back to square one. The night after the surgery, we went to visit him at the hospital. He really wasn't strong enough for a visit and didn't do much talking at all. He was in too much pain to even open his eyes, let alone communicate. This began a slow healing process that wasn't complete for about two years and had a lot of painful moments along the way. It has been 20 years since that injury occurred. My brother is married, has kids of his own and a thriving law practice. You can still see the scars on his legs from the burns and the grafts. My kids and his like to hear him tell the story. It definitely shaped who he is today, knowing such pain, healing and growth. As painful as the surgery was and as long as the healing process was, not having the surgery was not an option. A third-degree burn is referred to as a full thickness burn. This type of burn destroys the outer layer of skin and the entire layer beneath. Large third-degree burns heal slowly and poorly without medical attention. Because the epidermis and hair follicles are destroyed, the new skin heals slowly and if not treated properly can impair function and leave the skin without plasticity and movement.
It can be tempting during the therapy process to look for a bypass...an alternate route. This can happen for motorists to avoid other heavy traffic points or to drive around an obstruction. When commuting, a bypass is convenient and is looked upon favorably. However, in therapy looking for a bypass is avoiding the possibility for self-transformation. It's avoiding the difficult work that awaits us. Yes, often times there is painful stuff to sort through in therapy. We have to explore and examine difficult parts of ourselves and of our lives. We have to be open to the existence of patterns that aren't pretty, decisions that should not have been made and choices we didn't understand. We can find any number of ways to bypass and get creative about avoiding. We can use sex, relationships, drama, work, technology, shopping, traveling and Netflix as ways to bypass the work that we need to do. We can exhaust ourselves thinking that maybe if I am successful at work or make a certain amount of money or always look fashionable in my dress or find that special someone, or an exciting trip it will make up for the feeling that I am inadequate or don't know who I am or wonder if I truly am enough. Spirituality is another way we can bypass; hoping to be able to pray it away, read scriptures for insight rather than walking through our own pain, going to temple as a way of bypassing what awaits us. It can also be tempting to become extremely obedient and religiously regimented as a way of bypassing self-examination and binding God into our will because of our extreme obedience. While we may have many spiritual and moving moments as we engage in treatment, these moments do not exempt us from doing the hard work of examining, transforming and evolving. The ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) workbook states regarding spiritual bypass: "the person is attempting to avoid the pain that can come with working through the trauma and neglect from childhood. In some cases, the person attempts to jump ahead in the recovery process without going through the entire process. This path invariably fails or leads to dissatisfying results. If one does succeed in having a spiritual experience, but avoids program work, the person can still remain mired in addictiveness or problematic relationships. The spiritual experience may bring some form of enlightenment; however, the person can cling to old ways of living without embracing recovery. A spiritual experience without grounded program work can produce an unhealthy ego. With an inflated ego, the person can use the spiritual experience as a shield against working a full program" (page. 178-179).
Therapy is hard. It can feel overwhelming to begin the process and there may be points along the way where we question why we started in the first place. Therapy is also the beginning of investing in yourself as a person and in the life you are living. Beautiful things happen in therapy. Transformation happens in therapy. Healing and growth happen in therapy. If you've considered starting this journey for yourself, find a qualified therapist that you can connect with and trust and make that investment.
