Updated: Jun 21, 2021
I started counseling in school in the 9th grade and after 10th, I shifted to therapy. It has been 3 years now since I started to go for therapy. Therapy has made me grow as a person. It has made me come face to face with so many things that I subconsciously avoided or ran away from. It has given me a safe space and a safe person to talk to. My emotions are being released and a lot of toxicity has been released, too! When in therapy, my opinions are valued, my thoughts are gaining way more clarity and most importantly, I no longer feel numb. I have got all the support and the satisfaction that I am in safe hands. The thought of opening up to someone with whom I have no emotional ties is very comforting. Being a judgement-free and confidential space, therapy has genuinely been a source of light that guides me through the dark.
Being in therapy is filled with many obstacles, like facing the stigma to seek help for the mind, finding the right therapist and most importantly, being consistent for your sessions. There were a lot of times when I thought that I wanted to discontinue therapy because it made me face a lot of things which I was avoiding subconsciously, all the time.
Imagine this: You are about to board a train. You get in with all your baggage and wait for your destination to arrive. Unable to wait, if you board off the train before your destination arrives, you won't reach your destination. Similarly, you go to therapy with the aim of getting better. If you don't wait patiently till the end of your journey, reaching your destination can be difficult. Therapy hit me in the right spots. But in the end, I knew all the efforts were worth it because I wanted to get better.
Consistent therapy leads to consistent growth, it helps you to rigorously work on yourself. On some days, that in itself is very tiring and on those days, it is important for you to rest and to just 'be'. Even if there are times where you feel that therapy isn't helping you or that you aren't able to agree with your therapist, remember that you need to trust your therapist, communicate what you think is happening and wait patiently. A lot of times you won't even feel like going for therapy and it is in these times, that you need to push yourself and motivate yourself to go. I did, too. You can't delay mental fitness, right? Being in therapy has made me realize that therapy is an on-going process. It takes different amounts of time for different people to see a change because therapy requires you to have patience.
My Journey in Therapy
Initially, I was really hesitant to go for therapy because I had already opened up to my school counselor with great difficulty. Going to a new therapist meant opening up, again. There was a voice in my mind that said my counselor wouldn't have suggested I go to a therapist if she didn't feel I needed more help. With great difficulty, I went to one for almost a year but to my dismay, it didn’t work out. I had given therapy time but I felt that somewhere my therapist and I had reached a dead end where neither she understood me nor I understood her. I left therapy and continued going to a psychi