What’s Therapy?
Therapy is the process of working with someone wise and caring to gain greater clarity about our current situation.
Often the impetus for therapy is a major challenge in life - a difficult relationship, depression or anger management, a major loss, career disillusionment, worry about a family member, or perhaps a serious health diagnosis. Or perhaps we just feel stuck, or a bit lost, or even that we’ve lost sight of what is important in life.
In therapy, your counsellor's sole focus is to listen, to care, and to help you see more clearly. This may be the first time in your life that someone has truly listened to you. With their support, you can begin to make the changes needed to lead a more fulfilled life, and to make peace with those things which may have been holding you back.
Therapy is about finding freedom. It is about feeling empowered to live our best life.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. The greatest betrayal is living a life without ever meeting your own soul.”Carl Jung.
Most people come into therapy to address emotional and physical symptoms that suggest something is out of kilter. Often people don’t know where to start, or what to do to find greater balance in life.
If this describes you, then you are not alone. According to the Australian National Health Survey conducted in 2022, one-fifth of Australian adults suffer from mental health challenges each year, with diagnosable anxiety affecting 17% of all adults.
Psychopathology, a word used to describe these symptoms, comes from the Greek words psyche (soul), pathos (suffering) and logos (word/expression). This word suggests that our symptoms are “an expression of the suffering of the soul” (James Hollis).
Rather than taking medication or clever techniques to dampen these symptoms, psychotherapy is about paying attention to what our psyche/soul needs to feel whole as a person. In therapy you have the chance to express your emotions to someone whose attention is completely focused on you. Their job is to listen well, to help you to clarify your thoughts and feelings, and where appropriate offer insights, wisdom and strategies that will help you feel whole as a person.
When we take the time to really consider our daily lives, we may discover that we are living a provisional life that is defined more by stories from the past, or in the fulfilment of the expectations or the approval of others. A good question to ask in therapy is whether you feel truly free to live your life journey without seeking permission from others.
Sometimes people come into therapy out of concern for those whom they love. Questions might be about how I can best support my spouse or child through particularly difficult situations – health challenges, gender identity issues, interpersonal conflict etc. In those situations, it can help for us to be more aware of our own feelings and concerns, and these might otherwise cloud our thinking and prevent us from being as supportive as possible for those we are seeking to help.
