Therapy does not need to be an intimidating process. It is a relationship between you and your therapist which is devoted to your well-being and growth. Relieving your pain, reducing your symptoms, or changing your behavior or lifestyle may be part of that goal. The chief overall goal of therapy is to help you become better able to meet your needs, satisfy your desires, and live more freely in this world. Happiness, “feeling better”, or similar states are not necessarily the goal, although they may be by-products.
Therapy is often hard work. You will learn to pay attention to your thoughts, your feelings, and your relationships; to honestly acknowledge them (including feelings you wish you never had); to work with unwanted aspects of yourself, to learn to feel painful things and to face ugly realities; to talk candidly and respectfully with people you’d rather avoid; to accept impossible but inevitable situations; to change frightening but changeable ones; to face one’s inner monsters and to learn the outer ones – or to name and run away from them!
The therapist’s job is to listen carefully, to point out strengths that have been unnoticed and weaknesses that have been ignored, to look for hope when you are hopeless and danger when you are naive, to allow you to be dependent when you fear depending and to challenge you to grow up when you would love to stay little. In short, the therapist’s job is to assist you to learn to meet your needs, satisfy your desires, and live more freely in this world.
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