What Therapy Really Is

Chances are, it’s not what you think it is.

Therapy. For so long, the word itself has evoked cringes, stigma, feeling uncomfortable, and armchair discussions with long stares between the patient and therapist. If your understanding of therapy is that you walk into a room with another person and have them unpack your mind and psychoanalyze you while you feel uncomfortable and awkward, two things: (i) your perception is outdated and (ii) you misunderstand the basic concept of therapy.

Therapy is, as of the writing of this article, one of the highest tiers of mental coaching that we as a society provide. Mental coaching. Nothing more, nothing less. Just as you may have a coach for physical exercise, or a manager for your career, or a teacher for a certain subject you want to learn about, so too does your mind need a teacher and coach — and that’s where the therapist enters the picture.

Unfortunately for you, your mind is in an echo chamber. Absent a referee stepping in and reminding you that certain of your thought patterns are irrational (and if you have this sort of referee, send them my way please), your mind will continually gravitate towards the neural pathways it has already created, developed, and strengthened. For good or for evil, your mind is, for the most part, stuck in its ways.

Your therapist can act as an objective third party to check your mind and thought processes to determine whether they are truly rational, and help coach you through them should you want help.

Let’s also make one other thing very clear about therapy in 2021 — it’s not necessary to see someone face to face to be in therapy. Countless companies offer texting-based therapy with no live sessions at all from the comfort of your phone and laptop. So if you are hesitant or feel uncomfortable at the prospect of seeing someone face to face, don’t let that deter you. You’re in charge, and companies will offer you what you are comfortable with, be it texting, on-demand, video, or in-person sessions.

So back to therapy itself. Of course, the types of therapy offered out there are as varied as the types of personalities that exist in the world — psychodynamic, CBT, family, relationship, self-actualization, hypnotic, etc. Not all therapy is created equal, and it will take some thoughtfulness and experimenting to understand what kind of therapy works most effectively for you. Don’t be overwhelmed — like everything else in life, figuring out what therapy works best for you is an iterative process, and can take several attempts until you find one that can provide you with the perspective you need. It took me months to find one I clicked with. A close friend of mine looked for nearly a year before finding one she really jived with. It’s a process, and that’s ok.

“Every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The thing to remember is that all of these flavors of therapy revolve around the same theme: coaching you to work through the things going on in your head and body — thoughts, feelings, behavior, cognition, and fulfillment. If you approach therapy from an action-oriented standpoint — “what do I want to learn from this person? What is it that I need help on right now?” it will become that much easier to find a therapist who can work those muscles with you, and for you to tackle your battles in as efficient of a way as possible. Going into therapy with the mindset of “this person will fix me” will leave you feeling constantly disappointed, unheard, and static. No person can “fix” you because you are not broken. If you seek therapy, it’s because you want to improve your cognitive, behavioral, or emotional tendencies. Improvement — not fixing. The more you can approach therapy with an open mind and with an eye towards your therapist as a resource for you to leverage (as opposed to something for the therapist to poke and prod), the more you will gain from your time with them (even if only for a few sessions).

Accepting what you need to work on is usually the hardest part for most of us. For me, it took 27 years of suffering in my own mind before I was forced to accept that anxiety may be poisoning my life and that I needed help. Now that I have, it horrifies me looking back on the ways I used to think when anxiety was the one distorting my thinking, behavior, and actions.

There is no right path for any one person on their mental health journey. It takes time to process and accept when you need or want help. It then takes more time to process and accept that therapy may be the type of help you need. Of course, this entire process requires self-awareness, hubris, intellectual humility, and action on the part of the individual to accept that they may need help and seek out resources.

Just know that no matter what you are struggling with — big or small — it’s very likely that therapy can be an incredibly useful tool for you to exercise. A coach for your mind. A resource. A teacher. A mentor. A friend.

No armchairs. No awkwardness. No stigma. Just someone with a special set of skills who can help you on your journey. And if that’s not helpful, I don’t know what is.

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