Things to Know Before Starting Therapy
You’ve found your therapist. Yay! You’ve set up your first appointment and you’re ready to do this ish! Now what? There are a couple things to know before starting therapy that will improve your experience. Here are 4 things I wish I knew before going to therapy.
Only You can Fix You
At first, my mentality going into therapy was “my therapist is going to fix me”. Ay Dios mio, was I wrong. This is a misconception that many of us have. We seek someone to “save us” from ourselves. Let me save you some time and money on this one: YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON WHO HAS CONTROL OVER YOUR EMOTIONS. Punto. I had a hard time accepting this. I would blame others for my trauma. It’s much easier to blame others than to be real with ourselves.
For example, I used to blame my ex-husband for my trauma and PTSD. Although he is responsible for the trauma that led to the development of my PTSD, he was not responsible for my inability to process the subsequent emotional turmoil. Ooof, I know I might have lost some of you there. That’s hard right? I HAVE POWER OVER MY ACTIONS AND THEREFORE I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR MY BEHAVIOR. It was easy to blame him for everything: my low self-esteem, my triggers, my behavior when I was triggered, for feeling like I was defective. In order to move on with my life, I needed to realize, accept and harness the power I have to control my emotions. I came to embrace that I am responsible for the way I behave.
The answer and power lies within us. Yup, it lies within YOU. Therapy is a strong tool to help us understand our emotions, thoughts and recognize our behavior. Therapy helps provide the foundation for positive thinking and rewiring the way we behave. However, a therapist is there to guide and help us as we learn to develop these skills. Therapists are accountability partners that help us unpack our baggage, but at the end of the day, it’s up to us to do the hard work.
Dale Tiempo al Tiempo
In the beginning, I knew that things would have a slow pace because I understood that we were building trust. However, as the weeks went on, I felt like we were still at a slow pace. I wanted to fix myself quickly and move on with my life. I was starting to get impatient. “Le estoy pagando un chingo a esta mujer para que me aliviane and we haven’t even gotten past talking about my childhood”, I’d think to myself. Unbeknownst to me, my mom gave me the best piece of advice years ago on how to approach difficult situations: “Dale tiempo al tiempo mija”.
In other words, be patient. As an Aries, patience is not one of my strengths, so this was especially hard for me to practice. It will take time to unpack the hard stuff in therapy. Don’t Rush. It takes time to understand your emotions and behavior, as well as how they are connected to certain topics, situations or triggers. Once I surrendered to this truth, it drastically improved the quality of therapy I received.
Get Out of Your Own Way
Often, therapists will suggest tactics and tools like journaling, meditation, practicing positive affirmations in the mirror, etc. This all sounded silly to me in the beginning to be honest. I remember the first time I tried to look in the mirror and say my affirmations. I couldn’t take myself serious. “This is silly. What am I doing? How is this going to help”? I kept making excuses for not wanting to try. When these kinds of thoughts start creeping in, we have to remind ourselves – there is no growth without discomfort.
Get out of your own way, and just do the dang thing. It’s going to feel weird saying positive things to yourself in the mirror when you’re used to telling yourself negative things. But honey, you have got to start somewhere. You aren’t lame for wanting to improve yourself. You’re strong for recognizing that there is a part of you that wants more for yourself. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Step aside, echale ganas and just DO IT. You’ll be surprised not only by how much easier it gets to say nice things to yourself with time, but how significantly these small things leave a positive impact on your self-worth.
You are Your Biggest Investment
Lastly, therapy can sometimes feel like a waste of time or money. I used to think of it as “expensive” and began to wonder whether it was a good idea. Girl, you know what is expensive? Losing sleep. Feeling defective. Having doubts. Feeling not worthy of success and happiness. Feeling like you don’t deserve good things. That deceptive mindset will cost you business opportunities, career promotions, negotiations, sleep and the list goes on. Having a negative perspective about ourselves is what keeps us in debt, stuck in toxic relationships and working at jobs where we aren’t treated right. Now that is expensive.
Once you realize this, it’s time to change your mindset. You aren’t spending money on therapy, you are investing in yourself. Therapy is an investment in YOU. You deserve all the good things in life. YES. You deserve to get that job promotion, you deserve hot dates, you deserve a partner that treats you like a queen/king, you deserve to be CEO of your company one day. YOU deserve all of that and more!
