You come to therapy to get help, right? You recognise you have some kind of problem and it needs fixing! You explain the problem to a therapist, sit back and wait to be ‘fixed’!
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Therapy is a two-way process. It is collaborative. You and the therapist work together to solve the problem. It is a partnership. The counsellor is your companion on a journey to discover the truth of yourself. Since it is you ‘self’ that is being looked at, it stands to reason that you yourself have a big part in that process! So why do we call it ‘work’?
Often the thing you came to therapy for turns out not to be what the real issue was. It’s something else entirely. You and the therapist dig down into your ‘self’ and all kinds of things get brought up; things you’d forgotten, things you wish you had forgotten, things you buried deliberately, things that got lost in our head because they were too painful to bring up. Some of these things are really uncomfortable. Some are really hard to process. That is one of the reasons why we call it ‘work’, because it can be tough, but that is why you don’t have to do it alone. Your counsellor will be right there with you.
Then there are the times in between sessions. You’re going about your day in your normal routine and suddenly something you picked loose in a therapy session gets completely dislodged and a memory comes back. Sometimes it’s a feeling, a memory or a thought. You mull it over and a connection is made between two random things in your head that suddenly makes sense. The processing you do in between sessions, consciously or unconsciously, is often just as important as what happens in the actual sessions. This is another reason we call it ‘work’, because it takes over some of your life.
It sounds like hard work. It can be. But it can also be the most rewarding experience you’ve ever had. You only get out of it what you put it. Like clearing out an old attic of memories to make way for a loft conversion that will breathe new life into a tired space. It’s worth it.
You don’t have to do it alone. I can be right there with you, as soon as you’re ready to get started.
Sally 🙂
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