3 Questions You Need to Ask Yourself Before Going to Therapy
Most people come to therapy because they want to feel better. As humans, so much of our energy and time goes into trying to reduce our ‘bad’ feelings and increase ‘good’ feelings. Which makes sense - who wants to feel bad? Who wouldn’t want to feel good?
Where so many people get stuck, is when their efforts to change their emotion actually makes things worse in the long term. The ways we go about trying to feel better can often increase our suffering. Not only are the strategies ineffective, in that they don’t actually get rid of our pain, but they can often have negative consequences in multiple areas of our lives.
Take, for example, emotional eating. A common go-to for dealing with painful emotions, is turning to food. Comfort eating can be a way of distracting ourselves from difficult thoughts and emotions, and often gives us a short-term hit of pleasure. If we rely on this strategy excessively however, not only does it only work temporarily to relieve discomfort, but it can exacerbate our pain - often adding guilt to the pile of discomfort. Furthermore, it can introduce further costs into the mix - having consequences for our health and finances.
Another example is avoidance. Let’s take social anxiety for instance. For some people, socialising can bring up a lot of discomfort - worries about what other people will think about them, how others will judge what they look like, whether they are interesting/entertaining/funny enough etc. A common strategy to cope with this discomfort is to avoid social situations, and therefore the discomfort they elicit. This may take the form of declining social invitations, or more subtly avoiding opportunities for social interaction more broadly - like only going to university for classes and not hanging around at other times. This may avoid the discomfort that socialising can bring, but it sabotages the opportunity to develop fulfilling relationships.
We all do this stuff - things that make us feel better in the moment but that leave us worse off in the end. It’s often by following our natural instincts that we get stuck - our human brain is actually not wired well when it comes to dealing with emotion.
So this is not an exercise to judge, blame or criticise. I invite you to take an honest, open and nonjudgmental look at the ways you’re currently going about managing the pain that is inevitable with living. Ask yourself the following three questions:
What are (all) the ways you currently go about trying to deal with pain?
Pain can be all difficult thoughts, beliefs, worries, memories, sensations, feelings and urges that show up.
Your current strategies may include: distraction (TV, shopping, social media, youtube etc.), avoidance (people, places, situations, quitting, withdrawing etc.), thinking (blaming others, worrying, planning, problem-solving, analysing, positive thinking etc) or substances & self-harm (food, alcohol, drugs, risk-taking etc.)
How are they working? In the short and long term.
Did these strategies rid of you of the pain so that it never came back?
What is the cost (if any) of continuing to rely on these strategies?
How has the use of your strategies impacted upon your health, vitality, energy, relationships, work, leisure, money, missed opportunities and wasted time?
In asking yourself these questions, you may find that some of these strategies aren’t working for you in the long term. If that’s the case, you may be wondering what the alternative is? That’s where therapy can help. Therapy focuses on skills to manage difficult thoughts and feelings so that they have less influence over you, and don’t interfere with you living the kind of life you want to lead.
