You might be mulling over whether or not to sign up for counseling. You may find yourself exhausted from trying to solve your problems by thinking endlessly about how to fix them and at the same time wanting relief from the stress. Being able to ask for help is the first step. But if you can’t pick up the phone due to misconceptions about therapy then you remain stuck. I’ve found in my own life feeling stuck about anything almost always links to a lack of good information about the topic. Without real facts, it can be difficult to know what to do. I know personally, without accurate information I tend to lean into my general fund of knowledge, which let’s face it, is usually based on Facebook posts, reading magazine articles, conversations with friends, or at times bits of conversation I’ve gotten in a group. This isn’t a great way to make decisions, is it?
I thought it might be helpful to address those top 10 myths that people hold as real, related to the therapeutic experience. Once you address this misinformation with real facts, your myths can be debunked and you can determine a productive course of action to start addressing your needs so as to feel better quicker.
“Psychotherapy will involve blaming me and in the end, that will make me feel worse.”
Good therapy does not involve blame. Therapy instead holds space for the notion that everyone is doing the best that they can in a given moment. Blame leads to guilt, (I did a bad thing) and worse yet, shame, (I am a bad person). Leaving someone feeling guilty or shameful does not promote healing or growth and in fact, most people experiencing this in a session would quit therapy pretty quickly if that’s all that happened within the therapy experience because it would make them feel worse.
What usually frees you up to feel better is to identify the boundaries in your relationship so that you know what actions are yours to take responsibility for and what actions are the other person’s to own. Often times what creates sadness or anxiety is, in fact, is over-functioning in a relationship where you take too much responsibility and don’t lean into partnering with another. At other times we might not have taken enough responsibility in a situation too. (This happens. We are humans. Humans screw up. You are forgiven. )Should this be identified in therapy, the counselor is meant to gently lead you to this and have you determine whether or not you could have done better. At the end of the day as humans, we aren’t perfect (and neither is your therapist). Psychotherapy is about owning what you can, fixing what’s yours to fix, asking the other person to partner with you in the repair and moving ahead.
2. “Going to therapy means you are either weak, weird, or lazy -I can take care of myself.”
Many families have a culture where it’s shameful to feel down, to be worried or even to be different from the other members of the clan. You might have been told to “just look at all the blessings God has given you”, or “crying is for babies”, or “no one is going to like you if you continue to _______”, or “pick yourself up and just do it”. The person offering these solutions to your problems does not realize that in fact, you have already tried doing what they suggested but can’t, due to lack of motivation, sadness, and hopelessness.
Making space for these normal human emotions is what therapy is about. If you aren’t allowed to speak of them with those who are close to you then you don’t have a choice but to bottle them up inside. Usually, bottling things up creates an explosion. Yelling, melting down, crying uncontrollably, throwing things - these things happen when things have gone unheard. Going to psychotherapy when you can’t get control of emotion is the perfect place to sort out what is happening with you and to find your emotional balance again. Identifying the triggers (or the historical event which made this moment so loaded), and feeling like someone is there with you as you work through your problems takes the intensity and the isolation away. I would further debunk this myth by saying it is a courageous and resourceful person who utilizes therapy because they aren’t avoiding their problems or pretending they don’t exist. They are instead learning to strengthen themselves such that they don’t have to lean on others to make it through the day.
3. “By talking about your problems in counseling you will make things worse.”
I had a friend once who believed you could speak bad things into existence and so she would not verbalize any possible negative thing or feeling fearing she would bring it into her world. This person struggled in relationships and was unable to get her needs met largely because she couldn’t speak about them. I promise you that this does not occur in counseling. Most often with having a fresh set of ears and eyes on the problem, you learn something new about what has created it and what continues to keep it in play. Addressing your pre-set labels about what the problem is, why you have the problem, identifying when it began and why it continues to challenge you, often opens up further what the problem actually means to you. Most people end up realizing that they had been tolerating a circumstance for far too long, believing that they weren’t entitled to something better. I am here today to let you know friend, that you indeed do deserve something better and that the only way to make that happen is to speak that into existence to a person who wants to help you achieve more. A therapist’s validation of your experience can reinstate missing entitlement when that’s what’s needed.
4. “Therapy is just a nice stranger who listens to me complain.”
Friends listen with a bias related to what they believe you should do about your problem. This is because they care about you, yes, but also because they get care from you. Your wellbeing affects their wellbeing. If you are so upset that you can’t hang out and do fun things with them, or listen to their problems, then usually the friendship starts to become work for them and soon they make themselves unavailable and start to invest with other friends where they can get their needs met. Although we need our friends’ support and this is a real benefit of friendship, leaning on them too heavily changes the relationship. A therapist will have no benefit related to your mood or the decisions you make for your own life. You can show up as needy, messy and emotional as you feel. On the flip side, you can also arrive at the session feeling confident, excited and determined. Your therapist won’t replace you with a better client. You get to be exactly as you are.
I should add that therapy offers more than just listening. A good therapist tracks your patterns of interaction helping you notice what behaviors you engage in to get your needs met. Getting your needs met by others in funky ways can create relationship problems at home, work, school and with friends. Once the patterns are tracked, figuring out how they began is often a clue to increasing self-understanding. Later, identifying the change in behavior that is needed leaves you feeling like you are making traction on your problems. I don’t know too many friends who are willing to create a change process like therapy for a friend without feeling like they are being used because the reality is that you would need to meet with them weekly, for an hour for a period of time and it would need to be about JUST you in order for you to get your problems sorted out.
5. “The Counselor will tell me exactly how to fix my relationship problem and I just need to follow directions.”
Maybe the greatest myth about coaching or therapy is the notion that therapy is a passive process where the client just shows up and takes notes on the changes they are meant to create. The therapist/coach is the expert, the client is the learner and that it’s a top-down experience. This is completely wrong! What is true is that it is a relationship of equals that involves active participation by both the therapist/coach and the client. In fact, it’s interactive and the therapist/coach is not supposed to tell you what to do or how to fix things because therapy/coaching holds true that everyone has the answers to their own problems inside of themselves. This seems counterintuitive, I get it, because if I have my own answers why am I coming to someone for help? The reason is that we get blocked from those answers due to not seeing the problem accurately, not feeling entitled to support or care from loved ones, or being unclear as to what it is that we really need. Often times if a problem is seen more clearly the client then knows how to fix it.
6. “By attending therapy I am going to have to take medications.”
Most therapists hope that by attending therapy it will prevent you from having to take medications when possible. In the beginning, the therapist is usually assessing how well the client is doing related to their “daily living activities” AKA getting up in the morning, brushing their teeth, showering, eating well, getting to work on time, making time for pleasure, exercising, having rewarding relationships, etc. If a client is struggling in too many areas the therapist knows that the client will suffer needlessly and that the therapy may not work as quickly as the client needs the change to happen. In these cases, the therapist may recommend getting a psychiatric evaluation with a physician to determine if do you need medication. At the end of the day, it is always the client’s right to decide if they are willing or not to take medication.
7. “I’m not the problem, it’s my _____________ (partner, friend, parent). So they should be going to therapy, not me.”
When we are sleepwalking through the patterns of our relationships it often can feel like we are the victims of other people’s selfishness, yet what I also know is that it takes two to tango. This means that the space between two people - the relationship, is built by both. In other words, it takes two to create a great relationship and two to create a bad one. What you do in response to someone else’s bad behavior does count. Whether it’s flipping out, avoiding the conflict by people-pleasing, ignoring the problem or icing your partner out- doesn’t provide the clear boundary needed, where you let the other person know that something is hurting you and that it can’t continue. You have co-created the relationship that you find yourself within.
8. “I tried therapy once and I didn’t like the therapist. I don’t think it works.”
What research shows is that it is the fit between the therapist and the client that is responsible for the client being able to change. This means it’s super important to make sure you are working with someone who you feel understands you, reads your intentions clearly, and who makes you feel seen, heard and felt. If you feel a chronic disconnect with your therapist you are within your right to end treatment and keep shopping for a new counselor. There are all kinds of therapists available. People, of course, vary widely due to having different personalities and characters, as do therapists. Add to that, the kind of training that they have received and you can see that the possibilities are endless. You can look to friendships that have enabled more intimate sharing to get some notion of the kind of therapist you might work well with. Do you prefer to spend time with calm or energetic conversationalists? More talkative or quieter? Those that take things more seriously or those that find the humor in things and can laugh with you? A therapist who tracks your thoughts, your feelings or body sensations? Male, female, or non- binary? Younger or older? You get the point, don’t get distracted by a poor fit. End treatment with the bad fit therapist and find yourself a great fit.
9. “I need to find a therapist who went to the best school in order to get the best therapy.”
A good therapist must be a sensitive person. This enables them to read the nuances correctly in what you are saying as well as in what you’re not saying. This is not “book smarts” but instead what I would call emotional intelligence. A person can know theory inside and out but if they can’t read the energy in a room to deliver the correct intervention to you when you are in distress, because they can’t read you accurately, then the book smarts go out the window.
A therapist trained in a model of therapy post-grad after their Masters or Doctorate degree is one of the best ways to find someone who knows their stuff. Being able to read your problem correctly, then knowing the correct time to ask you about your interest in change, and then delivering just the right intervention to motivate you to change is tricky business. Ideally, you can find a counselor who has post-grad training in the area that you struggle in, for example, trauma therapy or couples relationship therapy, etc. I myself have 8 years of post-grad training in family, couples and sex therapies. It involved both classwork, videotaping of sessions for observation, and supervision by a supervisor who was a master therapist. The post-grad training changed my ability to accurately see a case and to know how to time my interventions. It further taught me how to deliver an effective intervention that would create an emotionally corrective experience for the client. Invaluable!
10. “I had a pretty good childhood and don’t need to dredge up the past- besides my problems relate to now.”
I believe that all individual problems that we face as adults are shaped by our childhood. I believe that the coping skills we lean into during hard times are also shaped by our childhood experience. It is within the family that we learn that we are worthy of support, that we are competent and good people, how to calm ourselves down in the face of adversity, how to connect meaningfully with others, how to problem solve and use our internal resources...I could go on. The point being is that our struggle is linked to our childhood tool belt being a tool or two short, related to what we did or didn’t get growing up. Although our caretakers did the best that they could do, sometimes it wasn’t enough. The good news is that by working with a therapist that you connect and trust in, you can reinstall those missing tools so that you leave the experience with more confidence and competence in relating to yourself as well as others.
I hope I have debunked all 10 of these myths about therapy, psychotherapy, counseling, and coaching in Doylestown. If you have one that I didn’t cover and want some feedback on, please give me a call and let’s talk about it. I know from my own personal use of therapy as well as from delivering it to my clients, that therapy does work! I’d be glad to help you see it differently too. If you are looking for a therapist who has a specialty in couples work, sex therapy, affair recovery, out of control sexual behavior, or are a guy looking for therapy for men I’d love to talk to see if I am a good fit for your work.