About Therapy
There are many ways to conceptualize the meaning of therapy. For me, therapy is essentially a learning expedition of the self, done through an unusual form of conversation within a singular kind of relationship. The purpose of therapy is, I believe, to alleviate emotional pain by gaining knowledge about ourselves. I find that knowledge about ourselves is best sought by speaking about ourselves more freely and more openly than our societal norms typically allow us.
What is therapy?
Therapy is a space, physical or virtual, that you can enter when you have a problem and need help – when you are dealing with a crisis; when you’ve reached a crossroads and need to decide where to turn; or when some deeper issue is troubling you, perhaps echoing something unresolved from your past.
Therapy is a space that you can enter when you want to change but don’t know where to start, when you want to change but fear the change, or when you want to change but have become too attached to old beliefs about yourself to truly, meaningfully, change.
Therapy is a space that you can enter when you’re feeling stuck – when your usual ways of coping with the world have stopped serving you effectively, or worse, when they’ve turned against you and have become part of the problem, forcing you to find a new way to break out and move forward.
In all its variations, therapy is always a space that you can enter in order to talk about yourself. Speaking often produces a liberating effect that is quickly felt. In the longer term, it can lead to real change.
Yet therapy is not just a space. It is also the time – the time that you dedicate to examining your life. And, most importantly, it is also a relationship. There is another person in that space, listening to you carefully, curiously, without judgement.
That person is the therapist.
How Can Therapy Help?
There are many ways to understand what therapy actually does. For me, it is essentially a learning expedition of the self — conducted through an unusual form of conversation, one that allows for a depth of reflection that everyday life rarely makes room for. The purpose of therapy is, I believe, to alleviate emotional pain by gaining knowledge about ourselves. That knowledge is best sought by speaking about ourselves more freely and more openly than our social norms typically allow.
The more you learn about yourself, the more you expand your freedom to make different choices — outside of therapy. But speaking freely in therapy also has a more elusive, transformative quality. Here is one way I find useful to describe it: stories have tremendous power over us. In therapy, you take the time to tell your story and examine it. You tell it, and retell it. In time you begin to identify gaps, contradictions, inconsistencies — things that need to be made sense of. You start to edit your story. You update it, reshape it, change it. Gradually, you realize you have been creating a new story — one more true to who you are and to what you want from life.
Everyone who comes to therapy arrives with some open question about their life — one to which they wish to find an answer. This question is rarely clear or straightforward. It often traces back to something from the distant past that has mutated over time, lingering into the present by attaching itself to contemporary concerns. It interferes with your life. It prevents you from experiencing joy, maintaining a sense of purpose, acting authentically, or getting what you want — or even knowing what it is you want.
This question usually manifests as what we might call a “symptom” — a recurring behavior, a pattern in relationships, certain feelings, bodily sensations, or fantasies, at the heart of which lies a mixture of pleasure and suffering. The symptom can provide immediate gratification while endangering your relationships, your health, your career, your peace of mind, your capacity to love. It may seem irrational, but there is always some older, internally coherent logic behind it. In therapy, we search for that logic together. That is how we begin to formulate the question you carry about yourself — and from there, we can start working toward an answer.
Who Can Benefit from Therapy?
If you have decided to seek out therapy, you have likely already recognized that something in your life is lacking or unsatisfying, and that you have at least partially decided to change it. Ambivalence about that decision is entirely normal — and expected.
The world is not a perfect place, and the people who influence us most are never without their own limitations, which means they can cause us lasting damage even without intending to. We all carry the marks of childhood and adolescence. We are all suffering, to some degree and in some form, from emotional pain.
Therapy can benefit anyone who has become aware of that pain and wants relief; anyone with an open mind; anyone curious enough about themselves to be willing to explore a new dimension of their emotional and inner life; anyone who carries a question — and that, in some form, is all of us.
More concretely, therapy can help you work through a specific dilemma or decision. It can help you recognize — truly and deeply — that your life is your own, and that taking ownership of it, as much as circumstances allow, is both possible and worthwhile. It can help you see yourself and others with greater nuance and flexibility, remove blind spots that have held you back, and improve your capacity to communicate and connect. It can help you understand the underlying motivations behind self-defeating patterns, make choices that serve you better, and find a way to live more peacefully with your past.