What do You do When Therapy Gets Hard?
Therapy is not an easy process, as it usually involves talking about problems, trauma, or emotions that affect your life in negative ways. Therapy is by nature difficult, but many people find themselves at a point in their treatment where therapy suddenly gets even harder. What’s going on when this happens, and what can you do about it?
Remember Why You’re Here
When you first start therapy, you’ll typically spend the first session or two talking about relatively minor issues, without delving heavily into the specific problems you’re having.
When you do start talking about the “heavy” stuff, you may feel uncomfortable and anxious. You may even feel that coming to therapy was a mistake and that you don’t want to continue.
As you get deeper into therapy it’s normal to have these feelings when you start talking about subjects that are painful for you. For instance, if you’re starting to talk about past trauma that you’ve experienced, you may feel as though you want to quit therapy and forget about all of it.
When therapy gets difficult, it can be helpful think about why you started in the first place. The problems you were having, the emotional pain, and whatever personal reasons you have that prompted you to make an appointment. All those reasons still exist—but therapy is helping you deal with them.
Accept it and Work Through it
Emotional pain and trauma thrive in darkness: they hurt you more effectively when you keep them secret and don’t talk about them. Talking with your therapist about these painful problems is like turning over a rock and shining a light on the dark hollow underneath. What you find beneath the rock is unpleasant, but if you keep shining that light, things quickly become clearer and easier to deal with.
So when therapy gets difficult, the best thing to do is just accept that it’s happening, take care of yourself as best you can, and keep working through it. These difficult times are temporary. It may feel too hard and too painful to relive a traumatic memory or talk about the things that are hurting you. But if you keep working on therapy then you’re learning how to deal with the trauma and the pain, and perhaps even learning how to be free from it forever.
On difficult therapy days, you can also help yourself feel better by engaging in active self-care. Think of some simple things you can do to feel better, such as have a bubble bath, go for a walk, watch your favourite movie, call a friend for a long chat, or go to bed early with a good book.