Is this Therapy?

This is a question I am often asked and for good reason.

Many of our clients have been through therapy sometimes for many many years, one particular client had been going to therapy off and on for nearly 20 years, and in real terms had the therapy solved the problem?…. Well you can guess I am sure the answer was no.

So why does therapy not work for so many people and why do some people just keep going again and again and again. If they don’t find success with one therapist then they go to another and another and another.

Lets take a moment to look and see what happens in therapy and see if it is suitable for you or if you think it may just work.

So you have a problem (it really does not matter what the problem is for this example) and you make an appointment to see a therapist. This is where it all starts for you but really we have to look at where it all starts with therapy.

The reason we do this is because this is the fundamentals of what therapy is all about, the way therapist are trained and the very ethos they stand for.
The main focus on therapy is I believe not cure but understanding. What does that mean? Well I suppose that one of the tenants of therapy is that people have to come to terms with what is troubling them. If they can only gain understanding and come to terms with what has happened they will obtain acceptance and be able to move on with their lives….. I suppose this kind of makes sense on the surface level but let’s just have a look on how that operates in the real world.

By the way if you have been in therapy then maybe you could see if this sounds familiar, or feels like something you have experienced when you look back.
So there you are at the therapists’ office or home and the therapist comes out to greet you. Many people tell me that this just feels like it is going to be hard work with a lot of pain and tears even at this stage, and this just from the greeting and the sympathetic look that you receive from the therapist and the hushed muted tones and pictures of nature or wise words on the wall. No one has ever said to me and the therapist was happy and a cheerful room etc.

You then walk into a room that has a couple of chairs and a table and on that table yes you have guessed it a box of tissues, you may just be guessing that this is not going to be for tears of joy. You may be wondering if they are for you or the therapist as I have heard that the therapist sheds a tear as they often recount their story in your time. Anyway the therapist then explains that the reason you feel the way that you do is because something bad happened in your past and that you have not come to terms with it, and once you do things will get better. So you answer a few questions about your life, and lifestyle, relationships with parents, siblings and maybe start to explore some of the bad things that have happened in your life.

Let me make this clear if you are normal then no matter what your background, your status or your income, you will have had bad things happen, it’s just part of the being alive and part of living, as someone once said to me “dead people don’t have any problems”. So the conversation is lead down the route of let’s look at some of the bad things and bad feelings in your life and see if we can work out “how you feel” about that particular episode. Let’s explore “why” you are damaged or broken.

“How do you feel about that ” is a term that you will hear a lot and so let’s say just for our amusement that maybe one of the reasons that you feel bad today is because and I say this tongue in cheek “that you got the wrong birthday cake on your fourth birthday”. Because you have had to relive this event all over again of course you feel bad. It is something that we/you will have to come to terms with and then you hear the words that you will have to get used to hearing probably when you are most upset and feeling useless “ok that’s really brave work but we are running out of time we will have to pick this up next week/time/session”.

So you spend the week in-between feeling bad and hoping that the next session you will be able to put a stop to this. Next week comes and surprise surprise its like the same situation again just that you start off with the “wrong birthday cake” and how bad you feel about that and then move on to something else which was bad that happened in your life and again you run out of time and again you feel bad all week and this goes on and on and on, week after week after week.

So lets say you do get to the bottom of things and you do gain the “understanding” and the “acceptance” and have the ability to “forgive”. You have dealt with the “why” you feel bad but the reality is that nothing has changed, you are still feeling the same way if not worse simply because you have had to remember (and even make things up to satisfy the therapist enquiries for more negativity) all the negative and bad things that have ever happened in your life.

Here’s an analogy of what this process is like:
If the building you were in now was on fire and full of people would you use the “therapy approach” and run around the building asking questions to work out “why” the fire had started. No of course not you would work out “how” you were going to get everyone out safely, and on the basis that everyone was out safely then would you really care about why it had started. Of course not.

In my years of experience I can safely say that asking “why” about a situation that has happened in the past is probably the most useless question that can be asked, but it is something that we are educated and trained to do from being very young.

Here’s the thing if you did remember the negative time correctly ( and there is a vast amount of data that says you won’t have remembered it correctly or anywhere near), and you find out why then so what, what exactly are you going to change. The best thing about the past in these instances is that it is over, for that we can be thankful.

So I am really not interested who did what to who, when and why, and how that “makes you feel”. The only thing I am interested in is what makes you feel bad and how do you generate those feelings and then how will I help you to generate different feelings so that you can feel differently and all being well indifferently about the negative things in your past that haunt you, slow you down, negatively effect your closest relationships, and generally cause you to live a less than succesFULL life.

I work with you to put you in control so you can understand that you have the power to generate good or bad feeling and that what you need to know is how to generate good feeling for no good reason.

Have you realised that when you feel bad you tend to make bad decisions and when you feel good you make good decisions.

So which would you rather have a dependence on, a therapist to make you feel a little less bad, hopefully and fingers crossed it won’t take too many sessions or weeks of feeling bad or would you rather have the ability to depend on yourself to generate good feeling and leave the past in the past in just one session.

Wouldn’t you rather have the ability to feel nonchalant about those negative things/people/situations that effect you or someone you know today.
So when people ask me is this therapy I trust that you will understand what we do is definitely not therapy in the traditional sense, it is just very effective.

Does this make sense to you, is it something that you can relate to, something that you would like to find out more about, then call us now and lets gets the things in place that get you from where you are now to where you want to be, quickly, easily and effectively.

Call us now for immediate attention on 0800 0191 366 or
0780 879 25 20 or text us and we will call you.