Therapy is Not Easy

Have you ever gone to therapy or considered seeking therapy?

I have. And I’m not ashamed to say that I currently do weekly talk therapy. In this post I have one overarching message to share from my experience with therapy and different therapists, and it is that therapy isn’t easy, but it is worth it.

Therapy isn’t easy in so many ways. The process of finding a therapist who specializes in the type of therapy you might benefit the most, let alone one in your price range, insurance coverage, and who practices nearby all present difficulties when tasked with finding a therapist. Luckily, Google is your friend when facing these difficulties.

You can research just about anything you need to know, from specialty, price, and location to patient reviews for therapists in your area. And trust me, you will want to do this research. It’s quite defeating committing yourself to a one-hour therapy session to find out that you and that therapist are not a good fit. That leads me to a second reason therapy is not easy.

After you find a therapist that fits your price, specialty, and location needs, you will want to meet the therapist in person and have one or several sessions with them to determine whether or not they are a good fit for what you are seeking from therapy. Several things you want to feel with a therapist are comfort, lack of judgment, openness, acceptance, and trust. You want to feel like you can build a trusting relationship in which you can be open and honest and also comfortable to share everything with the therapist who is trying to help you.

If you’ve tried therapy before or are in a situation now where you feel like you cannot be fully honest with your therapist, or if you feel judgment from them, I urge you to not give up on the idea of therapy as a practice that can help you. Just because the fit isn’t right doesn’t mean that therapy with the right therapist won’t help you. You might, however, need to evaluate your current situation and try seeking out a different therapist and potentially a different type of therapy.

This happened to me the first time I sought therapy. I had about five or ten sessions with a therapist where, in our sessions, we would talk about things that had happened and relationships in my childhood and adolescence that could have affected the way I feel and act currently. Doing so was extremely difficult and emotional for me. In my life, I’ve buried many things in my past as a coping mechanism, and uncovering those things brought a ton of emotional turmoil into my present and affected me long after the therapy sessions were over. After this experience I figured that therapy just wasn’t for me. It was too painful. I didn’t like revisiting the things that I had buried for a reason.

I got a bit older and my anxiety got worse. I had a full blown panic attack at 22 years old and lived in fear of another panic attack for two years after that. I had low mood and impulsivity but also was functioning fairly well in my life so I thought it was something I could try to deal with on my own.

Then I found myself one day staring into the train tracks, thinking of how easy it would be to just fall in, and I knew I needed help. I sought therapy from my school’s mental health center, since I didn’t know what else to do. I needed someone else to understand how desperate I was for help, and I was too scared to open up to anyone close to me about it.

This type of therapy was different. I saw the therapist for a total of ten sessions (since this was the free allowed amount) and we never spent a single session digging into my past. We talked about my past and childhood in small doses but we focused on my mood and problems in the present, and how I could deal with what I was facing in the present. I felt more comfortable engaging in these types of sessions and sometimes came away feeling sad, but also felt empowered and like I could regain control of my life.

After I finished that stint of schooling and moved across the country I figured it would be beneficial for me to continue some type of therapy, so that I could avoid falling into the super low mood and scaring myself. This is when I discovered ACT, or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

ACT is a type of therapy that focuses on your present self, and how you can make changes in your present to help yourself to feel better. Instead of emphasizing control of your thoughts and feelings, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy does, ACT encourages you to accept and notice your thoughts and feelings. It helps you to develop compassion for yourself for having these thoughts and feelings, but also helps you to not linger or ruminate on them.

ACT therapy in combination with an open, comforting, trusting therapist has provided the right combination for me in what I am seeking from a therapy experience. However, therapy still isn’t easy.

The third thing that isn’t easy about therapy is… doing the actual therapy. Pretty intuitive but sitting with a stranger, talking about your thoughts and emotions, your childhood, your relationships with others, and your life in a nutshell is NOT easy! Revisiting past events and situations, which were potentially traumatic is not easy. Accepting impartial commentary and advice on coping with these events is not easy. And making changes in your daily life as suggested during therapy is not easy.

All of these things make therapy not easy. But the more important message here is that while therapy might not be easy, it is worth it.

For me, it’s really difficult to put a price tag on my mental health. Without my mental health I wouldn’t have my livelihood, and I might not have my life. I have prioritized therapy as an expense over other things in my life. I have worked to find a therapist that is a good fit for me, and one that I can trust. And I am now in a position where if I work at it I can improve my state of being.

Therapy is worth it in more ways than I could count or explain in a blog post. Therapy can restore your hope that you can have a happy life. Therapy can help you to find the things that mental illness or burnout or exhaustion might have robbed you from, like your confidence, self-esteem, and motivation. It can empower and give you the tools to help yourself when you need it.

So overall, if you’re reading this and you’re considering trying therapy, I strongly encourage you to try it! If you’re in therapy and not happy about it then I strongly encourage you to try a different therapist or a different type of therapy. Most importantly I encourage you to not give up. You’re a strong person for seeking help for yourself. And while therapy might be tough at times, just remember how worthwhile it will be.