Get out of your head.
Humans have a lot of thoughts, and those thoughts are not always helpful or productive. We have thoughts about ourselves and our worth, thoughts about others, about our relationships, our survival, about the state of the world! It's a never ending barrage of thoughts. Thoughts of all sorts are constantly flying through our heads, the sheer amount of them can become overwhelming quickly, let alone when they begin to conflict with each other and turn deeply negative.
Therapy gives you a chance to get them out of your head, and for those thoughts to be received in a supportive and non-judgmental container. When we are able to get our thoughts out of our head and experience being heard, we start to become more aware of the content and tone of our thoughts. We can start to tease apart what is rational and what is irrational, which thoughts are helping us and which are hurting us, which are vestiges of the past and which are based in our present day reality. Often, we begin to realize that our thoughts about ourselves are not very kind, and from there we can actually begin to work on our relationship with ourself. It starts with opening up and getting out of your head.
Practice vulnerability.
The ability to be vulnerable, to open up about the most intimate parts of ourselves, the issues we struggle with, and the pain we are feeling, can be the beginning of a healing journey. This is not something that our culture encourages us to do, and many of us have bad experiences with being vulnerable, as well as associations with weakness or brokenness.
The ability to be vulnerable with those around us is a huge predictor of mental health, but it’s not an ability that comes easily. Vulnerability takes strength and courage, and those are muscles that we build up over time. Therapists give us the space to practice vulnerability and build these muscles. The therapy space provides us with the supportive trusting relationship where we can begin to experiment with acknowledging and sharing our true feelings, no matter how difficult, irrational, or inconvenient they may be.
The hope is that we can build up the strength and courage to bring that vulnerability out of the therapy room into our other relationships. This leads to decreased anxiety, stronger relationships, less loneliness and depression, more self acceptance, and a greater sense of life satisfaction.
Get out of your head.
Humans have a lot of thoughts, and those thoughts are not always helpful or productive. We have thoughts about ourselves and our worth, thoughts about others, about our relationships, our survival, about the state of the world! It's a never ending barrage of thoughts. Thoughts of all sorts are constantly flying through our heads, the sheer amount of them can become overwhelming quickly, let alone when they begin to conflict with each other and turn deeply negative.
Therapy gives you a chance to get them out of your head, and for those thoughts to be received in a supportive and non-judgmental container. When we are able to get our thoughts out of our head and experience being heard, we start to become more aware of the content and tone of our thoughts. We can start to tease apart what is rational and what is irrational, which thoughts are helping us and which are hurting us, which are vestiges of the past and which are based in our present day reality. Often, we begin to realize that our thoughts about ourselves are not very kind, and from there we can actually begin to work on our relationship with ourself. It starts with opening up and getting out of your head.
Practice vulnerability.
The ability to be vulnerable, to open up about the most intimate parts of ourselves, the issues we struggle with, and the pain we are feeling, can be the beginning of a healing journey. This is not something that our culture encourages us to do, and many of us have bad experiences with being vulnerable, as well as associations with weakness or brokenness.
The ability to be vulnerable with those around us is a huge predictor of mental health, but it’s not an ability that comes easily. Vulnerability takes strength and courage, and those are muscles that we build up over time. Therapists give us the space to practice vulnerability and build these muscles. The therapy space provides us with the supportive trusting relationship where we can begin to experiment with acknowledging and sharing our true feelings, no matter how difficult, irrational, or inconvenient they may be.
The hope is that we can build up the strength and courage to bring that vulnerability out of the therapy room into our other relationships. This leads to decreased anxiety, stronger relationships, less loneliness and depression, more self acceptance, and a greater sense of life satisfaction.
Get out of your head.
Humans have a lot of thoughts, and those thoughts are not always helpful or productive. We have thoughts about ourselves and our worth, thoughts about others, about our relationships, our survival, about the state of the world! It's a never ending barrage of thoughts. Thoughts of all sorts are constantly flying through our heads, the sheer amount of them can become overwhelming quickly, let alone when they begin to conflict with each other and turn deeply negative.
Therapy gives you a chance to get them out of your head, and for those thoughts to be received in a supportive and non-judgmental container. When we are able to get our thoughts out of our head and experience being heard, we start to become more aware of the content and tone of our thoughts. We can start to tease apart what is rational and what is irrational, which thoughts are helping us and which are hurting us, which are vestiges of the past and which are based in our present day reality. Often, we begin to realize that our thoughts about ourselves are not very kind, and from there we can actually begin to work on our relationship with ourself. It starts with opening up and getting out of your head.
Practice vulnerability.
The ability to be vulnerable, to open up about the most intimate parts of ourselves, the issues we struggle with, and the pain we are feeling, can be the beginning of a healing journey. This is not something that our culture encourages us to do, and many of us have bad experiences with being vulnerable, as well as associations with weakness or brokenness.
The ability to be vulnerable with those around us is a huge predictor of mental health, but it’s not an ability that comes easily. Vulnerability takes strength and courage, and those are muscles that we build up over time. Therapists give us the space to practice vulnerability and build these muscles. The therapy space provides us with the supportive trusting relationship where we can begin to experiment with acknowledging and sharing our true feelings, no matter how difficult, irrational, or inconvenient they may be.
The hope is that we can build up the strength and courage to bring that vulnerability out of the therapy room into our other relationships. This leads to decreased anxiety, stronger relationships, less loneliness and depression, more self acceptance, and a greater sense of life satisfaction.
Improve your relationships.
Isolation and loneliness are becoming ever more common in today’s world, and the ability to connect intimately seems harder to attain than ever. Typically people come to therapy wanting to deepen their relationships, and this starts with exploring your own internal blocks to intimacy. For example, how was intimacy modeled in your family of origin, and how might you have internalized those standards and be applying them to your present day life? What happens when you start to get close to someone? What defenses are triggered? What boundaries are important to maintain?
As you bring awareness to your own relational patterns in therapy, you can start to take more ownership of your side of the street in your relationships, as well as recognizing which relationships are worth investing in and which might not be a match based on your needs.
Therapy also seeks to go beyond relational self awareness through the therapeutic relationship itself. Relational therapy acknowledges that there are two humans in the room attempting to connect and build trust. Therapy can be a great practice realm for forging intimacy, with both you and your therapists reflecting on what it’s like to connect with each other. The chance to work through defenses to intimacy and get IRL feedback from your therapist can be pivotal to building the skills needed to improving your relationships outside the therapy room.
Undo shame.
Shame is that pernicious force inside of all of us (to varying degrees) that tells us there is something wrong with us. It makes us feel disconnected from our emotional core and contributes to our distress, anxiety, and depression.
We receive shame-based messages everywhere we turn, about our bodies, our appearance, our age, our sexual orientation, our race, our gender, etc. It is impossible to avoid shame in our culture, but therapy gives us the space to work through it so that it doesn’t direct our lives from the shadows.
Therapy invites your shame into the room. Often for the first time, people are actually able to give voice to their self hating parts, which can be empowering in itself. Your therapist will validate that these voices are common while helping you to start building a better relationship with yourself. Over time, as you begin to speak more gently and compassionately to yourself, you become less susceptible to the shame based messaging around you. This is a recipe for improved self esteem, better relationships, and more happiness.
Process trauma.
A traumatic event is one that stays with us after it’s over, not in the same way that a memory does, but as a continual lived experience. Trauma is an event that is so emotionally intense that it overwhelms our system and leaves us in a perpetually activated or shut down state for months, years, even decades. Trauma interferes with our abilities to feel, to be present, and to experience love. Often we get trapped in spirals of reliving or avoiding the traumatic event, which can be at the core of our anxiety or depression.
Therapy gives you the space and the trusted relationship that are needed to begin to process traumatic events. At the core of trauma is isolation, or a lack of support at the time of the event, and therapy seeks to undo that aloneness and provide the relational support needed to heal. Your therapist will move at a gradual pace in order to establish the necessary trust and make sure that you have the resources needed to process the trauma. It’s important to think about body based practices such as yoga that will assist in resourcing you.
In addition to traditional therapy, trauma sometimes requires another modality such as EMDR or ketamine assisted therapy. If your therapist is not trained in these modalities, they will be happy to connect you to someone who is while continuing your work together.
Understand yourself.
We often think things, feel things, and do things that we don’t really understand. We might not recognize what is really driving us to make the decisions we make, from the relationships we choose to the career paths we pursue to the sex we seek out. A lack of self awareness can make it feel like life is a bit out of our control, which can create anxiety.
When we give ourselves space to explore our past in a supportive therapeutic relationship, we begin to understand the origins of our drives. Maybe we keep seeking out that prestigious job because achievement was the way that we got love from our parents. Maybe we seek out emotionally unavailable partners because we are replaying a traumatic experience of abandonment in our past.
This process also allows us to learn about our triggers. For example, maybe you felt triggered when you didn’t get the promotion because that promotion carried with it the love of our parents. In recognizing why an event is so charged with deep emotion, the trigger becomes less powerful and derailing.
Awareness doesn’t mean that we need to label our decisions and actions as wrong, but it does bring more choice to our present life. Do we want to keep going for that unavailable person, or might we want to give a chance to someone new and different?
