MYTHS AND REALITY OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Often, people, when deciding to go to therapy or not, are guided by the mass of information around, get confused, get lost and cannot decide in any way whether it is worth it … already accepted, is perceived as an opportunity to tell myself that, probably, therapy will not help me, and to stop. The inner world is so arranged that the psyche does not really want to get into it, bring up some old and painful moments there, because it hurts, because they will have to live again and possibly experience horror or fear, pain, rejection or guilt. And the psyche really does not like to change, habits also do not want to be changed, which means that either a person's great desire to make his life happier, or hopelessness, when he already clearly understands that he will not be able to cope give an impetus to the decision to go first for the first consultation with a psychologist, and then start therapy.

MYTHS to face:

The psychologist will solve all my problems

The psychologist will not decide anything for you, he will not change your life, he will not find a job, he will not knock down the beloved you are waiting for from the sky, etc. The reality is that only you will change your life, and from your efforts and zeal the result you come to depends on. The psychologist will give you a new vision of familiar situations, change techniques that you yourself will apply or not, and the psychologist will give you support. But he will not be able to solve your problems for you, at least because for sure you are not 3 years old, since you came, and the psychologist is not your parent. Only by taking responsibility for your life completely and totally, you can change something. By simply accepting as a fact that this is your life and only you have the right to change it, leave it unchanged, find yourself in unpleasant situations or change yourself so that these situations also change.

One visit to a psychologist, and I will change

Before dispelling this myth, just look at how many years of your life you have lived as you live now, how many years you have low self-esteem, childhood traumas that you cannot deal with on your own. So why do you expect that a couple of meetings with a psychologist will be enough to change your internal structures, behavioral patterns, habits. Changes take time, and sometimes it can be years. Not necessarily 5-8 years or a lifetime, but a year, two or even three may well be. Each person comes with his own level of readiness, level of internal development and already attempts to change something. For some, the path to change will take a couple of months, while others will not change in three years. Everything is very individual, so do not be alarmed if a psychologist says that therapy can take several years. It may or may not be so. Just take responsibility for the result you are striving for. Perhaps you are the one who has such a great readiness for change, as they say, the soil has already been dug up and all that remains is to plant the necessary seeds, and someone has such a strong mental resistance, and the level of pain from injuries is so high that he will work through the same question. will be months.

REALITY, in which you have to be:

1 When deciding to start therapy, and choosing a psychologist, by giving money, you take responsibility for the result you want to achieve. It is even possible for the fact that the psychologist was not quite right, and his methods of work do not suit you, but this does not mean that therapy does not work, and there is no person in the World who can help you. This means that you are walking a certain path, on which it happened for you, and only you are responsible for what happens on this path. The wording not “it happened to me”, but “I chose it”, by the way, makes it possible to find out what total responsibility to oneself and one's life is.

2. You will have to change yourself. The psychologist will not give guidance on how to change other people. He will give techniques on how to change yourself. We'll have to leave the rest alone and deal only with ourselves: our reactions, habits and states. There will be no guidance on how to change mom, dad, colleague, boss or friends, this will not happen. But almost always someone comes with a request "what should I do with him …", realizing that there will be no rules for exploiting another person, simply quits therapy, considering it a pointless waste of time and money. A small rule to help, there is an unwritten law of life, and regardless of whether you share it or not, it still works - “everything that is in our life we have attracted to ourselves”. The source of everything that happens in a person's life, and what kind of people are present in it, is the person himself, which means that you need to work and change the source so that he begins to attract to himself what he wants, what is pleasant and gives joy. Leave others alone, maybe their happiness, this does not change at all, but live as it is, even if it seems wrong to you. Just switch the vector to yourself, and how I want to live, and how can I do so in order to become happier.

3. You just have to accept the fact that when a person begins to change, his environment either changes or leaves him. As a rule, with many, it simply becomes not interesting to you when your changes have already taken place inside, and sometimes the other does not already correspond to what you are releasing into the outside world. If you raised your self-esteem and stopped being a victim, then the tyrant is simply not interested in you, but you and the tyrant, because the energy of joy vibrates inside, and the desire to be happy, not suffer. Be prepared that after your changes the circle of people will be cleansed, just accept it as a fact. But other people always come to the vacant place, who already correspond to you new, who are more harmonious with you.

Each of our decisions, small and large, shapes both our present and our future. The decision to go to psychotherapy can lead you to results that you did not even think about, or it can lead to the fact that you decide to leave it as it is. No one will decide for you whether to do it or not, and no one will give guarantees that you will probably succeed and what will not work out in this process. Take responsibility, filter information, try or not try, listen to yourself and go ahead, no one will change your life for you!

Author: Darzhina Irina Mikhailovna