3 Ways Therapy Can Help You Get Unstuck and Why

You may be wondering how therapy can help you to heal and move into a life that would feel better, easier, and healthier.  While it takes work, therapy really can help you to get unstuck.

It has been studied and found that people often put up with signs and symptoms of mental health issue for approximately 11 years before seeking therapeutic help!  That is A LOT of time that could have been spent getting healing and being healthier.

Here are three ways that therapy can help you to get unstuck:

1) Therapy can help you to get all of the chatter inside your head out into the open in a safe space, and this can help you to process things clearer than you are able to when you are in the problem.

Why?  Therapists offer empathy and active listening, which is something so rare in our society today.  When we are actively attended to and heard, met with compassion and support, amazing things can happen that influence our internal meaning making.

In fact, it has been shown that more than 80% of the healing process is due to this unconditional positive regard and connected human relationship between the client and therapist.  Best of all, the therapist is ethically bound to keep everything in confidence so that what is said in the therapy room stays in the therapy room.

2) A therapist can offer you the tools and skills that they have learned to help you resolve your issues more quickly than you can do on your own.

Why? Your therapist has years of experience dealing with mental and emotional health issues as well as years of training to be able to provide you with solid counsel.  It’s like taking a car to a mechanic who can identify what a “ching, clunk, ching” sound is just by your sound effect description to them.  Therapists know what to listen for to help identify what might be underlying your pain or struggle so that precious time can be saved as they help you to hone in on what they are hearing you need.

3) Therapists can see blind spots that you don’t even know you have, and this can help you to be able to look at things from different vantage points and be able to get movement toward healing and problem solving much faster than if these blocks had not been revealed.

Why?  We each have our own personal worldview that has been cultivated over years of life experiences and influences.  It leads us to make assumptions as to what we are seeing, hearing, and experiencing as our brains try to categorize information it already believes it understands.  An outsider who is trained to listen for ways our thinking may be experiencing distortions can help to bring you a lot of movement that you may not have been able to glean and experience on your own.

You don’t have to go it alone.  Therapy is a powerful tool in your self-care and healthy self-management toolbox, but for it to work, you have to actually do it and use it.  

If we can be of help as you go about seeking to get the therapy you need, please let us know, and we can get you started: 541-275-0412

Creating Space For Vulnerability and Courage

Last time we discussed how to overcome passivity with accountability and humility.  This week we will explore vulnerability and courage and their role in moving away from passivity.  Passivity can become a habit based on previous experiences within our relationships.  It may look like a shutdown response where we tell ourselves “I don’t know what to do so I’m just not going to do anything.”  Or maybe we are in a situation where we don’t know how to engage with another person in an effective manner.  We often choose to be passive because when we have tried to engage previously, we believed that we made the situation worse so we don’t try to engage in the current experience.  We have to choose action, choose to be vulnerable, and choose to be the hero within our own story.  But how do we do this? 

The first step we can take to choose vulnerability and courage is to change our self-talk.  What are you telling yourself about who you are within a given situation?  When we allow previous experiences to tell us we shouldn’t try anymore because we may not have communicated effectively in the past, we are living in fear.  Fear can be crippling!  I’m not here to say just get over it.  The whole purpose of fear is to keep us safe, but sometimes we feel fear even when there is not really a threat.  Our limbic system, or survival brain, is in place to protect us.  This is where the fight, flight, or freeze response comes from.  Our limbic system will use previous experiences where we were actually in danger to inform our actions in new situations, but it can get it wrong sometimes.  To override this system we have to ask ourselves “Am I really in danger here?”  Usually the answer is no, and this acts as a reset within our body and it will stop us from projecting into the future.  

Now back to our internal monologues.  Our brains often trick us into believing that it is easier to be passive because “we are not good enough; bad at communicating; will just make it worse” and the list goes on.  We have to first notice that we are having these thoughts.  You may be tired of hearing this by now if you have read previous posts but it really is the first step!  Take a few minutes to sit down and explore what it is you are telling yourself.  Many people also find it helpful to write the thoughts down (even if they later throw the paper away).  By writing it down we are taking it out of our mind, or externalizing it, and it becomes easier when we actually see the thought to then acknowledge that we may not really believe what we are telling ourselves.  Our next step is to visualize.  Visualize what it would look like to act with vulnerability and courage.  Michael Phelps makes this visualization process a part of his training.  He takes the time before every training session to sit down, close his eyes, and visualize within his mind what it would be like to swim each race.  What his body will feel like, what his body will look like as it works in unison, and what it will feel like at the end of the race.  

You may also choose to speak the thoughts in your mind out loud, maybe to your partner.  One thing to keep in mind if you choose to do this is that if you have not often spoken your mind (been passive) it can feel aggressive to your partner.  I don’t say this to stop you from doing it, but it can be helpful to offer your partner some assurance.  When you voice your first crappy draft, just the thoughts that are running through your head before you reframe them, let them know that you don’t really believe this, you are just letting the thoughts out of your head so you don’t ruminate on them.  You don’t actually think they are a bad person!

To feel hopeful that we can change and act with vulnerability and courage we have to try again, even when we fail the first few times.  By telling ourselves that being passive is not actually helping our relationship, that we are worthy, that we are strong, and so on, we can break the pattern of passivity.  Your thoughts and feelings matter and it is important to discuss them with your partner to create a resilient relationship.  Hope does not mean that you will do everything perfectly, and say all of the right things, or that it will even be easy.  In reality it will be hard and it will take a lot of practice.  It is okay to say to yourself or to your partner “I am having a hard time right now and I am not sure how to go forward with vulnerability and courage.”  Just don’t let this stop you from continuing to try.  To be vulnerable with others, we have to first create a safe space within ourselves.  We do this by changing our internal thoughts into one of love and encouragement!

Taking Baby Steps When Setting Goals

In my experience, when couples come in for counseling they are often so hurt and disconnected that they do not even know where to start.  They know something is wrong and they are now looking for hope that their relationship can change.  But where does this process start?  Setting goals can help inspire hope and confidence in our relationships as well as in every aspect of our lives.  In the previous post we discussed SMART Goals as a tool to help create more attainable goals out of vague ones (so go check it out for an outline!).  SMART Goals are baby steps as well because they lay out small achievable steps on how to reach your goal.  Looking at a goal without steps can be overwhelming because how do you know where to start?  When we take small baby steps and continue moving forward sometimes we may reach our goal without even knowing!

Another thing that is important when making changes in our lives is to have strong core characteristics.  This means having character traits such as being trustworthy, kind, honorable, honest, etc.  There have been times in everybody's life when we have not shown these characteristics, but that does not mean we can not move towards expressing them now.  In Romans 5:3-5 it says “Not only so, but also glory in our sufferings, because we know suffering produces perseverance; (4) perseverance, character; and character, hope. (5) And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”  This verse speaks to the fact that we can build our core characteristics through our struggles and suffering if we allow God’s love to wash over us.  It also speaks to the nature of continuing through our suffering.  In other words, to not give up because there is hope and love on the other side.  

As mentioned above, couples know something is wrong in their relationship when they seek out counseling.  It is important to be committed to working on the relationship for therapy to really be effective.  This may seem obvious, but when partners feel hurt and disconnected it can be difficult to feel committed to working on their relationship.  When we feel hopeless like this, we often feel like we are the victim of the circumstance.  This may look like us saying “If they wouldn’t do this, I wouldn’t react in this way.”  Conflict is not often one sided though.  We must ask ourselves how are we showing up during conflict?  We’ve talked a lot in previous posts about taking ownership of our own actions and that is no different here.  When we take responsibility for how we have shown up in the past we are creating small bits of hope that the relationship can change. 

One issue couples often say they are coming in for is that they are not connecting.  This can be in many different aspects of their lives.  One baby step to reconnecting can look like taking a walk together over the weekend or sitting down and eating a meal together and talking… about anything!  Now, this may not seem like it could possibly help us reconnect because as humans we want immediate change, which is natural, but change occurs a little bit over time.  Those two examples are not supposed to create a deep, intimate connection right away.  There may still hurt and resentments that need to be addressed before that can happen.  Taking a walk or having a meal together is a baby step towards a more passionate connection.  

When we talk about passion one way to look at it that may be helpful is as a three-legged stool. The first leg is friendship.  This means that partners find general enjoyment with each other, there is a fundamental foundation of trust for this leg.  The second leg is excitement which means you look forward to spending time together.  When one partner walks in the room the other’s eyes light up.  Gottman calls this the awe factor.   The third and final leg is sensuality.  This leg comprises the more intimate, erotic aspects of a relationship.  This is when partners want to fully experience each other in their bodies.  If any of these three legs are wobbly or missing, it is hard to have passion with one another.  

Friendship and excitement can be a choice, while sensuality often comes when the first two legs are strong.  While it may be a hard choice to make when we do not feel close to our partner emotionally (which comes from the friendship leg), for example, we can actively choose to look forward to them coming home.  In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy there is the CBT Triangle.  The different points of the triangle represent our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  The idea is that each of those three aspects influence one another.  We’ve discussed before that we do not have control over our feelings because they are our parasympathetic nervous system’s way of trying to make sense of what is going on around us.  Once we acknowledge our feelings, we can change our thoughts and behaviors.  In other words, if our thoughts and behaviors are in our control, when we have different feelings we can choose how to respond and react. 

Making changes in our lives can be scary, but taking baby steps can help make goals attainable.  Do it scared!  By this I mean step out in faith and trust the process.  It is okay to be nervous about trying new things and at times it may not look very good and it will definitely not be a flawless process, but by taking small steps you are developing character.   Creating daily dialogue is another really important step because it is actively leaning into your partner.  Asking something as simple as “Hey, how are you?” or “What went well today? What didn’t go well?” shows your partner that you are genuinely interested in how they are doing and says I choose us.  Another baby step to layer with daily dialogue is holding hands.  Physical touch is something that easily gets lost, especially when we are building walls around ourselves.  Sit across the table from your partner and hold their hands during your daily dialogue!  Or during an argument take a second to hug them and say “I know we don’t agree right now, but I love you so much.”

At the end of every week, or month, check in with one another and ask what your successes have been.  What changes are you seeing?  This is not a time for blame and accusations, but to really sit down and do a check in.  When you do this you can also discuss what changes can be made if something has not been working out.  The more that we take ownership for how we show up, the better our relationships will be.  When you are able to do this, you will find hope.  You may find yourself looking around one day and realize you are once again excited to be with your partner!