Psychotherapy: Change Your Life Or Leave Everything As It Is?

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

Psychotherapy is a great way to change your life for the better.

Thousands of scientific studies and personal stories from people around the world have already proven the usefulness of this kind of psychological help. However, for many, going to a psychotherapist still causes resistance and doubts.

“It's expensive,” a woman wrote under my post recently. “Nothing can help me,” a dissatisfied acquaintance who is dissatisfied with life rejects the recommendation to undergo a course of psychotherapy. “I’m normal, perhaps this is not for me” - sometimes such doubts sound even in a conversation with a psychotherapist.

Where do these thoughts come from? After all, they create an insurmountable imaginary obstacle to human well-being due to the refusal of psychotherapy. Most likely, these statements were heard from people whose opinion for the speakers is more authoritative than their own. Were heard and accepted as true. And most likely, both of them do not have their own experience of psychotherapy.

And what if you question these statements of authoritative people and try to think and understand for yourself, what is psychotherapy really like?

Let's try and perhaps this article will help someone overcome their doubts and take the first small step into a new life.

So, there are 5 main obstacles on the way to psychotherapy, because of which you still do not live the way you could.

1. Psychotherapy is a very long process

Yes, psychotherapy is a process. It lasts more than one session, it is true.

But it doesn't have to be 3-5 years of regular meetings.

In fact, it all depends on what goal is set by the person who comes to psychotherapy; how long ago he faced the problem; what are his own mental abilities to overcome this problem and what is the level of professionalism of the psychotherapist.

One of my clients was very nervous before one exam. This was unusual for her, the fear was caused by the too strict examiner. Three psychotherapeutic sessions were enough for her to understand and overcome her fear, calmly, with confidence to pass the exam as “excellent”.

Another client suffered from panic attacks for a long time and was taking antidepressants. It took 6 months of intensive psychotherapy, 2-3 meetings a week, to improve her condition, after which she no longer needed to take medications - her life changed dramatically.

In other words, the duration of psychotherapy is individual.

It is generally accepted that a course of short-term psychotherapy consists of 25 sessions. Long-term psychotherapy is an open-ended therapy where a person is focused on a global result.

Thus, psychotherapy is an exploration of oneself, with an individual speed and duration..

2. Psychotherapy is expensive

Yes, psychotherapy sessions cost a certain amount of money, because psychotherapy is the same service as treatment, training, sewing, construction, etc.

The cost of psychological services, like all of the above, is different and depends on the region of residence of the specialist, on his qualifications, experience, level of education and self-esteem. There are also free psychological services.

Usually psychotherapy is carried out regularly once a week. Only when urgently needed (panic attacks, phobias, depressive states, etc.) sessions are increased up to 2-3 times a week. There are four to five sessions of psychotherapy per month. Based on this, everyone can find a specialist in their material capabilities.

Every day, all people acquire something for themselves: food, things, inventory, housing, knowledge, jewelry, impressions, etc. All this is not purchased free of charge - each purchase costs a certain amount of money.

Something at this stage of life is more relevant, and a person acquires it immediately, something is less important, and he postpones this acquisition for later.

Attending psychotherapeutic sessions, a person invests his material resources in improving his life - improving relations in the family, with children, with parents, eliminating psychosomatic symptoms, resolving intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts, etc.

It turns out that the cost of the process of psychotherapy is equivalent to the importance for a person of the quality of his own life.

In other words, psychotherapy costs exactly as much as a person estimates his life: himself, his health, his relationships, changes in his life

3. Psychotherapy is unpleasant

Some people think that the process of psychotherapy is all about tears and suffering.

Of course, it is a fact that they do not come to a psychotherapist to boast and boast of their successes. But the fact that psychotherapy is continuous suffering and tears is already a great exaggeration.

The pain that brings a person to the psychotherapist's office is gradually eliminated and ceases to weigh on the soul. Worry, anxiety, doubts and other problems that cannot be resolved on their own are solved with the help of a competent specialist. This is due to the fact that in psychotherapy sessions conditions are created for overcoming and transforming pain and suffering.

Over time, a person's suffering is transformed into an understanding of what is happening to him, and then into interest. Interest in your own life - in yourself, in new ways of interacting with people and with the world around you.

Psychotherapy is a process that develops understanding and acceptance of oneself and the world around us.

Accordingly, psychotherapy is exciting and interesting

4. Psychotherapy is not for me, but for those who are really sick

People of different sexes, ages, from different countries, with different religions, wealth, professions turn to a psychotherapist. They all have different problems, but all of them have one thing in common - everyone's soul hurts at this moment.

Psychotherapy is the healing of the soul.

When does the soul hurt? When something gnaws at her, when there is a question to which you cannot find an answer, when doubts, anxiety or depression corrode the soul, when there is no understanding of how to live on, but you want to change something, etc.

All people have a soul ache for different reasons at different times of their lives. Therefore, psychotherapy is for everyone who is going through hard times in their lives, and not only for those who have been diagnosed with a specific diagnosis in the clinic.

Thus, psychotherapy is for everyone and for everyone

5. Psychotherapy cannot help me

There are people who argue that psychotherapy cannot help solve their problems.

Such people complain about their lives, accuse their parents that they were raised wrong or that they were not given something, are offended by their marriage partners, quarrel with children, but will not try to risk changing such an unsightly life for the better.

This comes from the fact that it is much easier and easier for them to blame everyone for their bad life, to live in the role of a victim of circumstances, than to strain, make efforts and change something in it.

Definitely, the desire to change relationships or recover from an illness is not enough, even if you visit a therapist regularly.

Real change requires real action. Old ways of behaving and reacting to stimuli, which were unconsciously formed throughout the previous life, will pull back, constantly offering to react or act in the old way, as a person used to do all previous years.

To overcome this, to form a new way of behavior, a different emotional reaction, in addition to a great desire to live differently, willpower is needed.

On this basis, psychotherapy will help anyone with the intellect, the desire for change, and the ability to exert

So, let's summarize.

Of course, you can not change anything in your life, be dissatisfied with it, accumulate resentment and illness, do not strain and believe the opinions of people who have never tried it themselves, but claim that psychotherapy cannot help, etc.

Or you can take a chance and try it yourself. You can spend your time, money, make efforts and, thanks to these investments, get much more - your new life: recover, improve self-esteem, change relationships with children, with loved ones, with colleagues, as thousands of people around the world do.

All this is possible when you understand that any investment you make in the process of psychotherapy is an investment in your own life - in yourself! And there is nothing more valuable than this one life given to you

Therefore, doubting and choosing between psychotherapy and rejection of it, between changes in life and rejection of these changes based on other people's opinions, it is necessary first of all to answer one single question: