Questions about Therapy
What is therapy? Therapy is a process that seeks to facilitate growth. It occurs within the context of a relationship between the therapist and the client. Different therapist work in different ways, but I see the role as a therapist as tending to, or holding, the process by asking questions, being warmly curious and guiding awareness.
What does therapy look like? From the outside, therapy mostly looks like two people in a room talking. From the inside it is more complex!
The way I work, the client generally leads the conversation. I ask questions, reflect back what I'm hearing, and make empathic guesses about what's going on for the client. If we are working more somatically, there may be times when we'll study a gesture, a posture or an internal sensation. There may be times when we draw, move or use toys and other objects.
What do I talk about in therapy? You can talk about whatever you want. Generally topics range from daily life, current struggles and future plans to memories and long held patterns. There is often a focus on the feelings and experience of present moment. Everything is welcome, and with a few narrow exceptions, everything is confidential.
Do I have to talk about my _______? (parents, partner, history, body, feelings, etc…) Nope. You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about.
Can therapy help me feel better? The grammar nerd in me reads the phrase “feel better” in two ways.
First, with better as an adverb modifying feel. As in, After therapy I have more capacity to feel—I feel better!
Second, with better as an adjective modifying a subjective state. As in, After therapy I feel more relaxed and less angry. My emotional state feels better!
With both readings, the answer is yes. Although therapy won’t rid you of pain or make you feel good all the time, it can help you more access to your feelings, and it can help you have more good feelings.
But what if I don’t feel better? There are a lot of things that can get in the way of emotional access and good feelings. Part of therapy is looking at some of those things and being curious about them. This often helps them shift.
It can take time for things to feel better, and sometimes things feel worse and then better (and then better, and then worse again…). These waves are a natural part of the process. And, if seems like nothing is shifting or something feels wrong about the therapy, you can talk about it in therapy.
It also may be important to know that feeling better is not a requirement. You’re not doing anything wrong if you’re not feeling better, and you don’t need to try to feel better for your therapist.
What if I’m too embarrassed to talk about something? You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about. It’s normal for it to take time to develop trust. You may find it easier to talk about certain things as we work together. Or you may feel there are things you never want to talk about. I invite you to yourself to trust the relationship at your own rate. Spending some time exploring and understanding the embarrassment may also be helpful.
What if I don’t know the answer to a question you ask? I can ask some odd questions! I’m very rarely looking for a specific answer, and I don’t think that there’s a wrong answer. In therapy, as in other areas of life, I’ve often found that the richest conversations “don’t answer the question.”