You’re thinking about starting psychotherapy, but feeling a little bit scared. That’s understandable.
After all, you wouldn’t be considering therapy if you didn’t have some dark corners in your mind. Some skeletons in your closet. Some memories you don’t necessarily want to revisit. Especially with a total stranger. Especially if you fear it will expose some of your painful experiences.
Here’s the thing, though: you probably already know most of the negative and limiting things about yourself — having rehearsed them in your mind a million times. You’re likely all too aware of your faults, having suffered at the expense of them. Yes, part of what you do in therapy will cause you some pain. But no more than what naturally comes with life.
Once in therapy, the pain emerges first because we haven’t truly finished processing those painful things in our lives. It’s like a pus that needs to come out before the body can heal. That’s just how it works.
But after that, the farther along you go, the pain quiets a bit, and you learn how to get up from the suffering and march boldly onward. Then being able to feel hard things and ultimately to release the pain makes everything easier.
It is all so counterintuitive because learning to live with your emotions gets easier the minute you are willing to go into the pain. Even better: the less avoidant you become of suffering, the less suffering will be dealt to you.
And then there’s the flip side of that coin — the positive things you’ll discover. The strengths you’ll find that you never knew existed.
I guarantee those positives will outweigh the negatives. They always do.
So come on in to where life lives. Because therapy can help you live life. It can help you discard old debris of your emotional world, beliefs that are not only untrue but often debilitating.
Life is about being alive — about living life — not acquiring possessions. And therapy is about learning to live life fully. To embrace the fullness of who you are and who you can be.
There’s a different future awaiting you if you want it.
So come on in. I promise, the water’s fine.