Starting Therapy
11 signs it’s time to start therapy
Claudia* was 23 and had her first post-college boyfriend. She felt the pressures of that bizarre, early 20-something time, when she no longer had the structure and clear purpose of college guiding her actions. She had her first full-time job and first full-time live-in boyfriend. And she found herself getting upset about, well, everything. Everything he did made her mad. It was like they were in a constant fight. She felt sad and angry all the time and could not figure out where this was coming from. She always had positive, close relationships with her girlfriends and from what she could tell, a happy healthy upbringing and family. So why did she feel like such a mess in her relationship?
Claudia had always been interested in therapy — her mother was a psychotherapist, and Claudia was always intrigued by the passion she had for her work. She loved the idea of the power of a safe relationship and a healing conversation causing someone to make profound changes in their life. During this time Claudia also started to have attacks of intense anxiety, difficulty breathing and the feeling of claustrophobia in her body—which she later learned was a panic attack. She figured it was time to start therapy to save her relationship and figure out what was going on in her body.
These were some of the signs that led Claudia to find me. Claudia and I have worked together now for 9 months. She feels more rooted and grounded and in control of her emotions. She is happier in her relationship and feels much more in touch with herself. She is panic attack free and all around feels much less anxious in her daily life. As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I have seen hundreds of adults and couples make dramatic shifts in their lives, and it all starts with a healing conversation on a couch in my Playa Vista office.
So you might be wondering, how do I know when it’s time to start therapy? Here are 9 signs that it’s time to go therapy.
You find yourself stuck in reactivity mode. All the time. Quick to anger, easily irritated, and snapping at your loved ones or coworkers. In therapy we talk a lot about Reacting vs Responding and one of the most common issues I see is people coming in saying they don’t feel like they are in control or their emotions. In therapy, we explore this reactivity and develop coping skills to settle down the hyper-arousal in our bodies so that we can choose a response rather than stay stuck in reactivity mode. Mindfulness, EMDR, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are just some of the tools to help you decrease reactivity and irritability.
You know what you need to do but you are having a hard time getting yourself to do any of it. You have a million ideas, lists in your Evernote and iPhone notes app. You know where you see yourself headed and what you want to achieve, but every time you think about getting started, your brain clouds over and you feel that deep heaviness behind your eyes. A nap all of a sudden sounds like the only.possible.thing you can do in this moment. Therapy can help you help you organize your thoughts, explore your anxiety/avoidance cycles, and gain the motivation to finally get started on those important goals you have for yourself.
You have no idea what you want for yourself and feel lost. You’ve heard about this “vision-board” thing but you don’t really get it. You have trouble imagining your future self and a hard-time tuning into yourself and what it is that you want. It can be hard to separate the expectations of others from your own desires for yourself, especially if you’ve always been a high achieving person that is focused on pleasing others and meeting their expectations. Therapy can help you tune into yourself and start the journey of “inner listening.” Through inner listening we can begin to experience our gut-level feelings and desires and then begin to trust our gut to lead us towards our higher goals.
You say “yes” when you mean “no.” You find yourself committing to activities and engagements that you know you don’t want to do. And then you feel resentful. You are tired of being a people-pleaser. You are feeling drained and burnt out and tired of taking care of everyone else but yourself. You are curious about this whole “codependency” thing. You think you might have it but you aren’t sure because its a super confusing word with a complicated definition. In therapy we help you tune into yourself and learn how to say “no” when you mean “no.”
You wonder if you have “healthy boundaries” and want to learn how to have them. A boundary, by definition, is “a line that marks the limits of an area; a dividing line.” We put boundaries in place to keep ourselves, and others safe. You have trouble drawing boundaries with others, and find yourself rageful and resentful at people who ask things of you, then it’s time to come and chat with a therapist. If you frequently feel unsafe powerless, and option-less, therapy is a safe space that will help you learn to be more assertive and stand in your strength.
You have a hard time telling the truth. It can be hard to actually tell someone how you are feeling. When you finally scrounge up the courage to do so, it comes out aggressive and uncaring, and triggers a fight with your loved one. So you learned not to bring up the truth anymore. You’d rather not risk it because the discomfort of the fight that comes after it is just not worth it. In therapy, I will help you figure out how the tell the truth, and tell it kindly. And then deal with the uncomfortable feelings that come up around it.
You have a painful or difficult relationship with one or both of your parents. This is one of the most common reasons that people seek out therapy. You might think it had no affect on you, or that you took care of it yourself, and maybe you did. But it helps to have someone to talk to who is trained and can help guide you to a better self-understanding. Difficult relationships with our parents might spring from a parent with an addiction or other mental health issues including depression, mood disorders, or personality disorders such as Borderline or Narcissistic personality. Sorting through early childhood relationships and understanding how they continue to affect us today gives you the power to change your present-moment experience so that you are no longer stuck on old patterns.
If you notice that you have a pattern that is not serving you. My client recently identified a pattern in all his romantic relationships in which he kept his girlfriends at an emotional distance in order to protect himself, but his girlfriends ended up leaving him because they felt he was emotionally unavailable. He said that therapy has been so helpful for him because he is able to organize his thoughts and feelings to see his patterns over time, figure out the “whys”, and then figure out what next steps he should take.
Your thoughts are stuck in a negative loop. The tape plays over and over again. You frequently speak to yourself in negative ways, like telling yourself that you are failure or that you are not good enough and don’t belong. You find yourself disconnected from the present moment because you are ruminating and cannot pull yourself out of the negative thought patterns. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can you help you identify negative thinking patterns and create more balanced thoughts. By changing our thoughts, we can change our feelings and behaviors.
You feel restless, worried, and afraid that something negative is going to happen. You have a general feeling of fear that is out of proportion to the events themselves. You have trouble sleeping and wake up in the middle of the night with racing thoughts. Therapy and Mindfulness can help you learn to experience thoughts as impermanent, like clouds passing by in the sky. This can help you break down your fears and worries and come to a more balanced, spacious way of thinking.
You can’t seem to find a relationship that makes you happy. Whether you are single, dating, or in a relationship, therapy can help you identify ways that you or your past might be contributing to your unhappy dynamics in relationships and discover other ways to connect and communicate. One of my clients has been single and dating for a long time and she feels frustrated in love even though her life is great in every other way—satisfying friendships, a high-paying, high status job, and a supportive family. Many couples seek out therapy when they are just not happy in their relationships and need some help to communicate better, increase their emotional intimacy, and re-ignite the spark in their relationships.
If any one of these 11 signs above is something you relate to, consult with a therapist today to see how they might be of help. I’m here to help you find solutions and take action with readiness to create the relationships and life that you love. Therapy is in investment in lifelong change and my guarantee is that I will help you take steps to create the relationship and life that you love, increase emotional intimacy in your relationships, and find congruence with your values, relationships, and careers.
The sooner you dive in, the sooner you will have thriving relationships, healthy boundaries, a sense of safety and self-empowerment, and the ability to trust your gut. Act now—Let’s talk!
How did you realize it was time to start therapy? Comment below!
*Name and specific details have been changed to protect confidentiality.