What’s going on with therapy?
Let’s talk about therapy…
We live in times where we can’t avoid technology and in which virtual clinical psychology is becoming something more common and sought after. We do not question how accessible information about the human mind is nor how easy it is to contact an infinite number of therapists. On the one hand, this helps to destigmatize personal development, but on the other, so many possibilities can be confusing, making it very difficult to know what to choose and how to go about it. This has led me to wonder: how is it that there are so many people who fail to sustain therapeutic improvements over time or who do not even achieve a small part of the changes they seek?
On this precisely, I think there are three main reasons:
- Looking for quick fixes to issues that require time and depth.
- We do not give enough importance to mental health.
- There is both demotivation and fear when it comes to working on ourselves.
in first place
Simplistic approaches not only make change impossible, but often cause harm, reinforcing trauma.
This implies the idea that if therapeutic objectives are not being achieved, it is because the patient does not have enough conviction to change, when in reality you need to work on what prevents change (which usually has a lot to do with trauma). This does not mean that everything depends on the therapist, since we have to be actively involved in therapy for it to be successful but, there are situations that hold the patient responsible when failure is coming from intervention. In these cases, there is a lack of reflection on the part of professionals, indicating the existence of significant carelessness with regard to training. Thus, there are countless therapists who have very attractive but misleading marketing, leading us to want to find quick solutions to issues that require time and depth.
As for me, I specialized in trauma and attachment because I was a patient to this type of therapist. Her lack of knowledge on these issues strengthened limiting beliefs in me… “You are not changing because you are choosing to stay in your comfort zone”, was one of the many phrases that she repeated, that did nothing more than scratch certain wounds from my past, including the ones that gave rise to ideas like, “I should have done something” and “I am not enough”. Honestly, I came out worse than I went in… However, it was thanks to that experience that I came to understand how delicate the human psyche is and that working with it requires great care, knowledge and, of course, personal work on behalf of the therapist in order to avoid projecting onto the patient.
Quick fixes are very attractive but over time, we realize that they are nothing but dead ends. When we get to that point we usually give up or keep doing more of the same if we don’t know what or how to choose. Staying in the same dynamic can include continuing to believe certain ideas about ourselves that, rather than reflecting our reality, manifest our wounds.
For a therapeutic process to be effective, it does not have to be eternal, but we do need a more realistic approach: we cannot expect to work on our deepest wounds through a quick fix, more is not necessarily better, but neither is it possible to heal great pain with minimal effort. Each person is unique and has their own pace to achieve what they need. Hastening and forcing a personal process causes symptoms to stick, or makes them come back worsened.
Secondly
I think it's hard to know what and how to choose because we don't give enough importance to mental health.
Despite the fact that there is extensive research that shows that the physical and the emotional are inseparable, we still resist seeing ourselves as a whole. And not only that, we give less importance to our mind, denying it a top spot on our list of priorities. With this, I do not want to convey that the mind is more important than the body, but they do go hand in hand.
How do we notice that we tend to give much less importance to mental health? By reflecting on how easy it is to give up the search for our psico-emotional wellbeing. If things don’t go well with a doctor, we have no problem looking for another and if that one doesn’t work either, we keep on looking… Unfortunately, the same does not happen with mental health and for this reason, we tend to remain emotionally unprotected, at the mercy of stress and trauma, which increases the risk of suffering from physical illnesses.
Not giving enough importance to mental-emotional health also reflects a lack of trust towards mental health specialists and I think this has a lot to do with what you read earlier. It is very difficult to trust when what reaches our eyes and ears are mostly very attractive but inefficacious proposals.
I work a lot with psychosomatics (a discipline that studies the mind-body dynamic), and I have seen several therapeutic failures that have occurred because the emotional dimension had not been taken into account. Emotions that are not processed become entrenched in the body and these often find symptoms or physical illnesses as an escape valve, since it may be the only way out for internal conflicts. The body is the battlefield of the wars that are fought in the mind and, ultimately, it offers us a lot of information. The mind can make up all kinds of stories and emotions can be very confusing, but the body does not lie.
Third and last
I believe that something that generates a lot of resistance when starting a therapeutic process is that there is both demotivation and fear when it comes to working on ourselves.
Most of us come from homes where emotions were not expressed or at least not in a healthy way. So, perhaps we have lacked the opportunity to learn the importance of psychological and emotional well-being or how to regulate what and how we feel. So many times, I have heard that what my patient wanted to achieve was to stop feeling a certain emotion or to learn how to control what goes on inside… Emotions cannot be controlled, they are regulated and the way to start doing that is by recognizing that we need to connect with them.
This on a theoretical level sounds great, but it also brings up a lot of fear. Fear appears because we do not know how to emotionally regulate ourselves in a healthy way and since it’s something unknown, how can we come to believe that it is possible for us? Perhaps in our homes we witnessed repression, denial or, violence and chaos… Why would it be different for me if I start to open the boxes where everything seems to be so well kept? If I start to move things around, will I collapse? What if I end up feeling worse than how I started? These are all valid and fear-based questions that often reflect our deepest needs. However (and here I connect with the previous points), if I start to realize how important mental health is, then I will surely try to find a good therapist, one with whom I feel safe to open up my boxes with.
In conclusion
Getting to the root of the problem is essential as it is only when we get to it, that we have the possibility of achieving changes that are sustained over time. Anything else is just a band-aid.
Simplistic approaches are like a drop of water for a dehydrated person, that is, insufficient. We will not be able to start claiming more sufficiency if we do not recognize the importance of mental health. This goes hand in hand with the fact that if I trust and feel safe with my therapist, I will be able to go beyond any fear or demotivation.
And who am I to talk about all this?
I am not one to judge another professional or specialist, but I do have the training and experience necessary in order to emphasize the importance of working with someone who has vast knowledge and experience in mental health. Unfortunately, I have seen several cases of malpractice and I also admit to have suffered the consequences of trusting someone who did not understand the complexity and depth of the human being.
From pain, I understood the importance of going through a personal process and releasing the stagnant emotions that were generating physical, emotional and psychological suffering. It is because of experiencing pain that I studied psychology, specialized in trauma, and spent years learning how to best help people.
Regarding my journey… I was born in Sweden and grew up in different countries: Denmark, South Africa, Australia, the United States, Argentina, Chile and Spain (in the latter I have lived for the past 5 years). Since I was born, I have constantly moved from one place to another, which has given me a cosmopolitan and multicultural background, allowing me to meet, understand, learn from and work with people from all over the world.
Psychology is my passion and my purpose, and I consider that there is nothing more gratifying than helping people release the suffering that has weighed them down.