How therapy can
help

‘We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or to hate, to see or to be blind. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them, and then to become the storyteller.’  

— Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

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Therapy gives us the opportunity to slow down and become curious about experiences that can be difficult to understand when we’re caught up in everyday life. You may know exactly what you want to talk about, or simply have a sense that something isn’t quite right. 

 

Sometimes what brings someone to therapy is obvious: anxiety, depression, grief, relationship difficulties, loneliness, or a period of major change. At other times, the difficulty is harder to name. You may find yourself repeating patterns you don’t understanding, struggling to say what you really want, or feeling the life you’re living doesn’t quite fit the expectations you (or others) have had for it. 

 

Therapy isn’t about giving you a set of solutions or telling you what you ought to do. It’s an opportunity to look carefully at what is happening, including the contradictions and difficulties that don’t immediately make sense. Together, we can begin to understand what gets in the way of you living in a way that feels more satisfying and more your own. 

 

What emerges from this process will be different for everyone. It might mean finding a different way of relating to yourself or other people, making a difficult decision, becoming clearer about what you want, or discovering possibilities that were difficult to see before. Sometimes it may simply mean getting to think about your life without having to perform a particular version of yourself.