Sending yourself to therapy, does that make you crazy? Maybe it makes you attention seeking? Like you’re looking for a problem that maybe doesn’t even exist. You’re looking for something or someone to blame all your out of character actions on perhaps?
But your brain is an organ, and just like your liver or your heart it can get sick when it isn’t treated with care, right?
We know all about the things we should and shouldn’t eat, we know how much water to drink, we even know how many steps we should be doing a day and how many times a week we should be hitting the gym. So why do so many of us seem to falter when it comes to looking after our minds, like we don’t know how to care for that part of us, or like asking for help from people to give it the care it needs, means we feel weak and damaged.
Would you call someone who’s constantly suffering from heart attacks crazy for trying to go to a professional for help? Doubtful. so maybe more of us should shut the f***k up when it comes to giving an opinion on someone and their need to give their minds some more care and attention.
You know what the sad fact is, the people who take themselves to therapy are in most part only there to deal with the people in their lives who should be in therapy. Ironic really.
But anyway, how can I be a such a big advocate for something and be out here telling people around me that they’d benefit from going without actually trying it myself? Seemed hypocritical.
All I can say on a verdict on session one is this – we all have issues. Therapy actually takes a lot of mental strength. Most of us go into defence mode when someone points out an issue in us, so get ready to battle some demons that you’ve hidden down VERY deep. Get ready to have memories triggered that you didn’t even know existed. And for me, quite possibly the worst part …. get ready to cry in front of a stranger who’s managed to trigger an emotional response in you just by talking about what’s currently happening in your life.
Something no one knows really is this, you’re actually going to feel worse before you feel better. As memories and experiences get dragged up out of the gutter of your subconscious it feels like you have to start from basement level to work your way up.
If you’re going to therapy to look for other people to blame for your issues, then you’re probably not going for the reasons you should be, and if you come away with a victim mindset, then you’re not ready to do the growth you should be expecting either.
Therapy isn’t there to give you an out for being a shitty person. It’s there to help you understand all the things that go on in your head when you don’t understand them yourself. It’s there to give you valuable tools so you can stop falling into recurring toxic patterns and making the same mistakes.
But above anything. I think the most important thing to understand is this: therapy is not for the weak, it’s for people who want to understand themselves and are ready to stop making the same mistakes they always do.
It takes a lot of mental strength to voluntarily go through a process like this. And I’m still very much a big advocate for it, but only for those who I think have the mental competency to hack the journey it takes you on.
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