When you go to therapy, it is clear that it is because you are in a complicated situation that you don’t know how to manage alone and you ask for help to do so. Therefore, it is assumed that the person is usually receptive to this change and wants to go through this transition to greater well-being. But still there are things that come up during therapy that can be better managed . These details can speed up or slow down the therapeutic process.

Tips for when you go to therapy

I will now discuss several ideas and tips that can help you in your therapy and in the relationship with your therapist .

1. Therapy is a team effort

You have the information and the therapist has the tools, don’t expect the psychologist to do your part, nor try to do his . Many times there are things that are not told in therapy because the person directly labels them as irrelevant or unimportant and sometimes they are key to getting to the bottom of the problem. Therefore, try not to save information for your psychologist, everything you tell him/her about you can be useful so that he/she can help you and get a better idea of how to manage your symptoms. The psychologist is not a fortune teller; you have the keys even if you don’t know them.

In the same way, do not pretend to have all the control over the therapy, the psychologist knows how to help you, and therefore let yourself be guided in certain things or do not pretend to solve everything by yourself, he or she knows that there are things that you cannot do alone and will accompany you on the journey.

2. Therapy guides you, but no one can make your way through it

It links to the previous point, but it is important. The psychologist will not or should not make important decisions for you , nor tell you what you should do, only guiding you to draw the conclusions and the answers to your questions yourself.

3. Change can be scary, even if it is desired

As hard as it is to understand this because we are having a hard time at some point, if we have been in a problem for a long time, we have also made a habit and a mental structure around it. As much as someone hates to be sad and depressed all day, that can be their comfort zone for years, so even if they are willing, breaking that suddenly is going to produce vertigo. You have to understand these kinds of defense mechanisms, respect them and give them their time so that they can give in and changes are made gradually and acceptably.

4. Not everything will be scaled up and improved

It’s very exciting to see that I’m making progress and it’s getting a little better every day. But unfortunately this is not usually the case. The most common thing is that you go forward a little bit and backward a little bit. I take 3 steps and go back 2, forward 5 and down 3. It’s part of the process of being well and it’s necessary to count on it so that when it happens we don’t fall apart and we can keep going .

5. Only the one who gives up fails

Persistence and patience with ourselves is key to be able to continue in a therapy, which is usually hard and to be able to overcome what has led us to it.

6. Starting therapy does not mean that I am defective or have something wrong with me

Just as a person cannot know everything and when he has a breakdown in the bathroom he calls the plumber, there are certain things that simply by having them too close to us are not easy for us to deal with. Everyone has problems , deaths of painful relatives, events that have affected their lives… Asking for help to be able to handle this kind of thing can save a lot of suffering and of course is a sign of great strength because I am willing to change, learn and improve by facing my own ghosts many times.

7. Things that have happened to me are important to me

We know that there are people who have suffered a lot in life, and who have had very difficult situations, and sometimes we don’t feel entitled to complain simply because we haven’t lived through those hard experiences. But the emotional wounds that we each have have hurt each one of us and have affected us in some way, and recognizing their importance can help us to open up in therapy and go deeper without judging what happens to us .

For example, sometimes in therapy people talk about how their parents have overprotected them, and that this has given them a great complex of uselessness or of feeling like children as adults, which makes it difficult for them to make decisions, or to feel safe to handle the problems of everyday life; but at the same time they say that they cannot complain, because their parents have not beaten them, nor have they punished them harshly. That’s true, but their injuries are others that are affecting them, and everyone can and should handle their own.

In conclusion

I hope that these little keys will help you in each of the therapy processes you may go through in the future. Constancy is a virtue, and when something hurts, there is only the struggle until it stops hurting.