When you ask people if they recommend therapy or not, some recommend it as something everyone should do to take care of their mental wellness, while others say it was a waste of time.
Therapy is just like going to your primary care doctor for a check up to maintain your health. Even though you may have been told to go to therapy, you may not be in the mindset for therapy. You may not even think that therapy is for you.
If you aren’t sure if therapy is something you need, here are thoughts to consider when deciding to go to therapy.
Do you want to go?
Therapy does not work on someone who does not want to participate. If someone is forcing you to go to therapy, it will only be a waste of time for everyone. You will not get the conversations you need to get to if somebody is closed off and unwilling to be vulnerable.
Are you ready to be honest with yourself?
Therapy is a lot of digging deep within yourself. It is not creating a story to look a certain way to your therapist. It is not creating a story that makes you look good in another person’s eyes. It is really being honest with the ugly parts that may be inside of you and unraveling it. Are you ready to face those parts of yourself?
You get out what you put in.
Many people who say therapy did not work are those who did not put the work in themselves. These people are the ones who did not have the patience to see themselves unraveling, and did not have the strength to open up. Therefore, therapy got them nowhere because they did not invest any of themselves into it.
What do you want to get out of it?
Ask yourself, what do I want to get out of therapy? What is my goal in therapy? Having some kind of goal for therapy is helpful to get where you need to go, and what you want to achieve. If you have no goals, maybe a goal would be to have a goal. But if you don’t have a point, you may not get anything out of it.
What is therapy to you?
Therapy can be a venting session, but therapy is not where the therapist tells you how to solve your problems. Therapy is learning how to identify and solve the problems yourself, so that you can become self-sufficient in the long run. If you are looking for someone to solve your problems, therapy will be frustrating. If you are looking to understand yourself and reach a deeper understanding of life, then therapy may be for you.
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