The short answer?
YES.
No matter who you are, what life stage you’re in, what life experiences you’ve had, therapy can help you! Yes, a thousand times yes. How you ask? There are many things that therapy can do, and I will present 3 main things that I believe are important framed in the context of what therapy is not.
1. Therapy is not only for the “mentally ill”
Our life is surrounded by brokenness. Our world is wrecked with brokenness, seen in natural disasters, starving families, diseases, and nations shackled by oppression. We also experience this brokenness daily in our personal lives. The clearest example of this is when those that are closest to us, those that are supposed to love us most, hurt us, or when we hurt those we love. This is the epitome of our brokenness. Our brokenness is clearly evident and yet many of us have become numb to it. So much of our life is lived on autopilot, moving from one moment to the other. Rarely do we stop and process what we’re experiencing and how this affects us. Those with mental illness are not more broken than the “average” person, but perhaps they experience this brokenness more acutely than the rest of us. Therapy is the opportunity to confront our brokenness face-to-face and begin mending the cracks. My job is to ensure you feel safe, and able to be vulnerable so that healing can happen.
2. Therapy is not a cure all
Therapy won’t “fix” you, therapy can’t fix your spouse/partner/friend/family, and therapy won’t make all your problems go away. We can’t mend all the pieces at once. It will change your life though. As you continue on this journey of healing, my role is to teach you how to cope with the brokenness, what you need to mend the cracks, and become more resilient so that the things that used to hurt, hurt less. Therapy is the support beams through which healing can begin and continue.
3. Therapy is not a complain centre
My role as a psychotherapist is not to simply listen to your complaints. While that is a part of my job, as listening and making sure you feel heard is very important, my job does not end there. My role is also to challenge YOU, to help YOU see and experience things differently, and to help ignite change so that YOU can begin healing. I am not the one doing the mending. Therapy is YOU witnessing your brokenness and YOU mending it. It will be difficult, sometimes painful, requires your commitment and is completely worth it.
Therapy is a means through which we can safely confront our brokenness, and begin healing from the pain within us, the pain we've received, and the pain we inflict on others.
If this is something you’d like to learn more about, or are interested in, contact me today for your free 30-min consultation.
Stay tuned for my next post about the therapy models I integrate into my practice. Subscribe to receive email notifications whenever a new article is posted by hitting the “EMAIL SUBSCRIBE” button on the right.