Going To Therapy Is Easier Than You Think
It's far easier than than living with anxiety, depression, unresolved trauma, or whatever else you struggle with.
Polina Zimmerman | Canva In my podcast episode on Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families, I mention that it is easy to go to therapy (especially now that most people offer teletherapy) but hard to decide to go to therapy. I would like to expand on this for all the people who are interested in what I discuss about therapy but are too conflicted or anxious to start therapy of their own.
If you know that your marriage, parenting, job performance, or any other important aspect of your life needs work, you really ought to be in therapy. You know it and I know it. If you are thinking it is extremely hard to go to therapy, it isn’t. It seems hard, but that is just your brain throwing up anxiety flares and trying to trick you into keeping the status quo. Why? Because people fear change, especially if they grew up in negative, anxious, constricted homes.
I will knock down all of your protestations about how hard therapy is, one by one:
1. It's too expensive
It may not be. There are university training clinics like the one at the University of Maryland that I trained in. There, you get therapy from a doctoral student supervised by a licensed therapist. You pay something like $10 a session if that. Look for a university training clinic in your area; you can do this by googling “clinical psychology PhD or PsyD program near me.”
If you have insurance, you can go on Psychology Today and find a clinician who takes your insurance in your area. Even if you say you cannot find someone you click with on your insurance and you go to a self-pay practice like my group practice Best Life Behavioral Health, you can get a superbill (a receipt with your diagnosis code and the code for the services you receive) that you can submit to your insurance if you have any out of network benefits; call your insurer to ask.
2. It won’t fit into my schedule
Teletherapy means you have no drive and no prep work. You can do it in your car and many of my clients do. You can do it at night or early morning. There are therapists with all kinds of hours. I have a teletherapy practice myself and it’s awesome and convenient for my therapists and my clients.
3. It will be too draining
Being too drained for the rest of your life activities isn’t a common thing that occurs in therapy, or nobody would be able to go. My clients are normal humans with kids, spouses, jobs, friends, and whatever else. They have a session with me and then they go back to their lives. I myself have been in therapy and did the same. Even if you sob throughout all of therapy, you will still be able to go back to your life, because that’s just what you have to do, and people are resilient.
4. I won’t like the therapist
It doesn’t take a therapist to figure out that if this is your objection, you tend to be negative and cynical and this is exactly what you should be addressing in therapy. Plus therapists are very likable. I think I am one of the least likable ones actually, because I do a lot of challenging of negative beliefs, and I am still not a horrible ogre.
If your variation on this is “The therapist won’t be smart enough,” then you are lucky because you just literally gave your therapist your diagnosis — narcissism — and this will expedite treatment. (I kid, sort of, but you also know I’m likely correct.)
I am not saying that the work you do in therapy is easy. It is hard to tackle all of the issues that brought you in. Some of them have been sensitive issues for years. Sometimes you feel disloyal when sharing things about your past and family. Sometimes you feel challenged and confronted with information about yourself that you don’t want to hear, even if you know it needs to be addressed.
What I am saying is that it is fairly easy to email a provider, fill out forms, schedule a session, and get yourself in front of a computer every week or two, thereby potentially creating significant and lasting change in the only life you get. You deserve to do this, and if you have kids, they certainly deserve you to do it.
Here is a rundown of what therapy is like with me which can give you a feel for what it’s probably like in general with other therapists, so you can see how unthreatening a process it is.
Getting into therapy is easy compared to the paperwork you need to send your kid to school or camp. It is easy compared to your job or dealing with your kids. And it is certainly a lot easier than living with anxiety, depression, anger, loneliness, dissatisfaction, unresolved trauma, lack of intimacy, trust issues, self-hatred, bitterness, self-doubt, or whatever else you struggle with. At this very moment, you can decide to use this post as a springboard to reach out for the help you need and deserve. And till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, Therapy Is Easier Than Unhappiness.
Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice Best Life Behavioral Health.