Maybe you should talk to someone - How therapy helps
Maybe you’re bored at work and unsure what to do about it. Maybe you’re struggling to connect with your teenager. Maybe you’re navigating the dating scene for the first time in years. Maybe you and your partner aren’t having sex as much as you’d like. Maybe your partner just outright said that you should talk to a therapist.
Underneath these and other issues are emotions and ways of thinking that we rarely slow down enough to notice. Or we feel stuck in them, unable to make changes that we know we need to make.
Talking to a trained professional who won’t judge you for what you’ve done or how you feel might be exactly what you need to get unstuck. Therapy is different from friendship. A therapist listens to your thoughts, feelings, and experiences without any requirement for you to listen to theirs. They also have no agenda—because they have no relationship with you outside of therapy sessions.
Using their training, a therapist can help you in many ways: increasing resilience, managing stress, showing up more authentically with others, noticing and expressing emotions, navigating life/family/career transitions, getting clearer about your life’s purpose. They can also teach you skills to use between sessions in your everyday life, like mindfulness, ways to regulate emotions, and communication skills.
THERAPY IS FOR EVERYONE, BECAUSE EVERYONE STRUGGLES SOMETIMES
You might be wondering, what’s therapy actually like? That’s an understandable question. Many of us learn about it only through movies and TV shows. Opening up to a stranger seems like it’s for “crazy” people. Something must be “wrong” with you. You should just “grit your teeth” and “get over it”—or “work harder” to control it. It’s “just a phase,” or, “It’s all in your head,” they say.
The truth is, we all suffer from time to time. There are the obvious challenges that blindside us: experiencing a breakup, the death of a loved one, getting fired. Then there are the areas of our lives that just feel “off”—that never get much attention because we’re racing from one thing to the next.
All of us have experienced some level of trauma, particularly when we were young, before we had the understanding and emotional tools that come with being an adult. Some of us may have gone through the acute pain of sexual assault, a car accident, or a natural disaster. Some of us might have simply lost connection with our parents and other adults in moments that felt overwhelming.
“You can have childhoods where no overt trauma occurs,” says the physician and addiction expert Gabor Maté. “But when the parents are just too distracted, too stressed to provide the necessary responsiveness, that can also traumatize the child.” We’ve all been overwhelmed at times, unable to process our emotions, feeling as though we didn’t have enough attention and support to do so.
Being able to talk about these experiences, thoughts, and feelings with someone who won’t judge you for any of it—and who has been trained to help you with difficult emotions—can be incredibly refreshing and healing.
TALKING ABOUT EMOTIONS IS EASIER WITH AN EXPERIENCED THERAPIST
This is especially true for those who were raised as boys. Many boys are shamed for showing “softer” emotions. They’re told to “man up” and stop acting “like a girl.” They’re encouraged to take action rather than share feelings. They’re praised for solving math problems and ignored (or worse, teased) when they talk about emotions.
A while back, walking through a block party in my neighborhood, I witnessed a sad example of this unfortunate socialization. A smiling boy, all of six or seven years old, asked a face painter to turn him into a blue and purple butterfly.
“No, you’re not going to be a butterfly,” his mother said from behind him.
“Why?” the boy asked, his smile fading into confusion.
“Because...” she said. “Why don’t you be a tiger or a pirate?”
Many boys are taught by their parents and other adults about what it means (and what it doesn’t mean) to be a “real” man. Likely, the mother thought her son should want to be fierce and aggressive rather than radiant, harmless, and feminine, like a butterfly. She probably feared being judged by other parents for having a boy who expresses himself outside of masculine norms.
Even if your upbringing was different from this, you still received messages from our culture. Movies often feature tough, stoic men and warm, relational women. Male musical artists often sing or rap about women as objects rather than human beings. Our individualized society encourages competition rather than collaboration. Some of these things are changing for the better, but boys and men (and girls and women) are still bombarded by messages about how to be.
What’s more, men have been socialized to avoid asking for help. Men seek out therapy far less than women. So much so that there’s a popular Twitter meme about it. Men also tend to have fewer close friends than women do. And with the friends that men do have, we’re more likely to watch sports or throw back some beers rather than confide in each other about emotional issues.
Whatever your gender, it’s almost impossible to escape our society’s stigma against getting help with emotional and mental health. People who seek out therapy are often characterized as “weak,” “crazy,” “whiny,” “neurotic,” and all kinds of other judgments. Who wants to be any of that?
THERAPY IS WORTH A TRY
You might also be wondering, how do I know therapy will work? The answer is, you don’t until you try it. There’s tons of data showing its benefits—research shows over and over again that therapy has significant and lasting effects on mental health. It literally improves the structure of the brain.
But here’s an analogy: If your car’s engine was making noises, wouldn’t you take a look under the hood? You’d probably take it to a mechanic if you couldn’t fix it yourself, right? Why not do the same with your mental and emotional health? You can always buy a new car, but you only get—in the words of the poet Mary Oliver—“one wild and precious life.”
Ready to get Started?
Call us at 301-960-8960 for a short chat with our Client Care Coordinator, who is available weekdays from 9 AM to 5 PM. You can also fill out the contact form and we will get back to you.
