A Newbies Guide to Therapy.
“So how do I actually do therapy?” Somebody asked me this the other day, and to be honest, it was kind of a humbling moment for me. As a business owner trying to create a youth mental health service that engages young people, I’d overlooked a basic concept in marketing – not everyone knows what you know. I’d forgotten that most young people don’t know what lies on the other side of a referral from a GP.
As a clinician, I’ve spent hundreds (if not thousands) of hours in rooms doing therapy with kids and adolescents. It is easy for me to chat about hard stuff – simply because it’s my day job. But, for the other person/people in the room it’s normally their first time. Cue joke about first time nerves.
In addition to the unknown, therapy also has a pretty bad PR problem. Hollywood’s depictions of psychologists, psychiatrists and people with mental health problems are at best ignorant and at worst completely deprecating. The Sopranos (if you’re old enough to remember it) was the icing on the cake. It’s all turtlenecks, plaid blazers, weird room furnishing, extended silences and “issues with your mother.”
This annoys me because this is a big misrepresentation. Especially in the world of adolescent and youth mental health. Most of the time seeing a psychologist when your young is more about learning how your brain works, understanding why it works that way, problem solving challenges and developing skills to manage things.
So, in attempt to demystify some of these myths and to help young people navigate their fear of the unknown, I’ve put together “A Newbies Guide to Therapy.” Hopefully these tips help.
1. So many questions. To start off there are so many questions. So much explaining, but then it tapers off and becomes more back and forth. Like any relationship, you do the groundwork at the beginning and then it becomes more natural.
2. It’s about the long game. Your psychologist is the coach, you are the player, and your life is game day. Think about your sessions like training for the game. With consistency and persistence, you will improve over time. In your sessions, you and your coach work on things like – learning where your natural talent lies, what skills need work, developing general tactics for the game and the overall game plan.
3. Therapy is not passive. Sometimes it’s hard for people to get their head around but therapy is not something that is done to you (like a medical procedure), it’s done with you (like learning to drive a car). As good as your psychologist might be, they don’t live in your world. Like a coach they can’t play your game for you. If you don’t show up for training and put in the practice, things generally don’t improve.
4. Sometimes it can be shit. Like sport, some days you perform better than others. Some days you and your coach click and other days you feel like you’re working in different directions. Some days they push you when you don’t want to be pushed. For this reason, you have to think about it as collective learning over a period of time. So long as you’re trending upwards on average, it’s working.
5. Therapy relies on the information given to make change. Unlike a medical procedure, there is no objective data (i.e., blood test results) for your psychologist to work from. The objective data is what you report – whether it is objectively “truthful” or not, we take your word for it. Withholding information, making up stuff or stretching the truth, is purposeless.
6. It’s for everyone. I genuinely think everyone on the planet could gain something from therapy. It’s not only about being unwell or having mental health problems, it’s about building a better understanding of your own brain. To really push the sports analogies, most people can run (or roll for our wheeled friends) a 100-metre race. But those who work with a coach to improve their performance, do it with more ease. They examine their technique, break the skill down into small pieces, practice all elements of the race, and build overall fitness all to improve their efficiency.
Until next time,
Courtney.
