When you think about therapy, most will picture a one-to-one conversation with the patient and therapist sitting across from each other. Although that’s not how every therapy session goes, you can’t be blamed for only thinking that therapy is all about talking because popular TV shows and movies only show this side of therapy. Except for a few, the therapist is always a glasses-wearing, formally dressed, writing pad holding, excessively nodding person!

There are so many types and forms of therapy in the world. The extensive study of psychology has brought forward tons of pioneers, founders, and developers of different forms of therapy that benefit society in many ways.

Psychologists have always understood that each person is unique and thus needs unique approaches to tackle their problems. 

So, no. Talking is not everything a therapy session is. Depending on what type of therapist you go to, you will have different experiences. From more experiential methods to group sessions and practical home-works to role-playing, other therapists use a myriad of techniques to understand what the client needs.

Only those people with serious mental illness need therapy.

This age-old stigma has glued on to us like gum on our shoes. It never really goes away. There are always tiny traces of it left behind. 

Anything that gives you solace, lets you feel at peace and maybe takes your mind off of the stress a little bit, if not all, is therapeutic. 

You don’t need to have a ragging, life-threatening problem to go to therapy. People go to therapy all the time to help them deal with everyday battles. We all have our fair share of struggles that we face daily.

Not everyone who goes to therapy needs to pop pills to feel better.

People come for struggles with relationships, self-confidence, career choices, self-esteem, motivation, and so many more. 

When repressed, suppressed, and not dealt with, the minor, seemingly insignificant problems and issues are prone to manifesting themselves into more extensive issues and consuming power over you. 

Let me enlighten you with an example. If ten years ago, someone tells you that you’re dumb, the word gets engraved in your mind. You never deal with it because it was never a significant problem in your life, but every time you want to answer a question the teacher asks in class, you remember it, and it cripples you from answering the question for fear of being judged again. 

I can’t stress enough the power our mental state holds on our physical life. We think by suppressing such thoughts, we are growing, and we’re not affected by it, and yes, sometimes, it works. Or we pretend it’s helping even when it’s not. I think it’s okay that some people don’t deal with it and yet, go on to live undisturbed by it. 

More often than not, this issue comes back and manifests itself in many forms that we don’t even realize why it happens. This is where therapy comes in.

What you think might be a trivial matter could be the biggest struggle for some. So when someone comes to you for help on such issues, be open to lending them a listening ear; that could be all they need. 

You’ll never know unless you deep dive into your own self and uncover the truth. 

Psychotherapists blame your past for your present problems.

Therapists believe in “no shame, no blame.” The entire repertoire of a therapist consists of “no judgment” no matter what. 

The job exists for people to have a safe place to talk about problems without the fear of being judged or shunned. 

Contrary to popular belief, not all therapy focuses on the past. Yes, many problems can have their roots in the past, and uncovering the past truth will give you answers. There’s no denying that flipping through your book of life will undoubtedly bear the answers to some of the problems you have now. But sometimes, the answer lies in the now. 

Take Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, for example. Therapists who specialize in this form of therapy focus on the problem at hand. They do not need to know your past to understand your situation now. 

They separate the problem from the person and say that, “the problem is the problem; the person is not the problem,” and hence, there is less importance given to the problem, in a way, suggesting that the issue should not have the limelight in therapy. Instead, it is “Solution-Focused.”

You will immediately feel better after 1-2 sessions in therapy.

Therapy is not a quick fix. Unlike traditional pain killers, therapy does not have a one-stop solution to all your problems. 

They say “good things take time,” and I believe that taking your time to navigate through life, with each step, calculated in a way that benefits you, adds up to make a life for yourself that’s free from unnecessary stress.

A typical therapy session lasts 40-45 minutes, and this can be repeated 2-3 times a week, depending on your case and what your therapist deems is beneficial for you. Although, some new forms of contemporary therapy, like Brief therapy, are considerably shorter than traditional therapy. 

With that said, the beauty of therapy lies in the relationship you build with your therapist and vice versa. A healthy relationship takes time and effort from both ends; when you see this happen through days, weeks and months, it makes the relationship even more important to your mental health.

There is a fundamental importance in the building of a strong client-therapist relationship. Only if the connection is strong will you trust your therapist, be open, become more confident, and eventually allow you to accept and love yourself. 

Trusting your therapist is everything in a therapy session. And for this, you need a positive therapeutic relationship.

Therapists are there to give you clear-cut solutions to your problems.

You should never go into therapy expecting clear-cut solutions to all your problems. You can, but if you do, you’ll most probably come out of it discouraged or dissatisfied. 

The main goal of therapy is to guide you and give you the necessary tools to navigate your life correctly. Therapists are there to listen to your problems, understand how you feel, and develop coping strategies to help you find your way in life successfully.

In many ways, your therapist is the older adult in the movies, spewing wisdom, the person you meet to ask directions when you’re lost, the person that ushers you to your seats in a show; ultimately, your therapist is the one with the map. 

They first learn where you’re coming from, where you want to go, then give you the directions and all the tools you need to get there.

I once heard a saying that goes something along the lines of, “if you give credit to your therapist for feeling better, the job of the therapist is not yet complete. But if you credit yourself for getting where you are, then you have had the opportunity of finding the right therapist for you.”

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The problem is the problem; the person is not the problem. – M. White & D. Epston

Whenever I get asked the question, “Who are you?” a hundred different answers run through my mind. I am a scholar for those who know the education system, I am ‘my name’ for those who are holding pens and writing boards, I am my parents’ daughter for relatives, I am my brother’s sister for those who know my brother, I am a friend’s friend for friends of friends (yes friend, 5 times!) I am a psychologist for my clients, I am a business owner for my customers, and I am a writer for my readers.

Even with this whole paragraph of identities that I and others have about me, I can still be another 100 paragraphs’ worth of identities. I think most of us can agree that the stories we tell people about ourselves change ever so slightly, as we change the people we tell these stories to. The story of a great party can turn into 3 different parties for 3 different listeners: one PG-13, one rated R, and another one for the long nosed ones!

Narrative therapy believes that you are the stories you tell about yourself. Reality is socially constructed and so, the interactions we have with people becomes our reality. We have multiple stories/narratives about our lives such as our hardships and achievements, our abilities, relationships, desires, hopes and dreams and so much more. These narratives shape our experiences and therefore, our lives.

The intention of this therapy is to open up space for people to create their own stories, so that they can have a sense of control over their realities and hopefully give their lives more possibilities. We tell stories that identify who we are by stitching together different moments in our lives into a cohesive whole. These stories carry the essence of who we are. By the logic of this type of therapy, the narrative you carry about your life is your reality.

If I carry a story about me as a good cook, I have come to this conclusion by putting together a series of events in my life where I was appreciated for the food I prepared. The more snippets of stories I add to this, the easier it is to demonstrate how I am a good cook because “someone once said…” My competence in cooking is fiercely dominated by the idea that I have done exceptionally well in a sequence of events while dismissing the times that I might have done a terrible job because it does not fit into the dominant story- that I am a good cook. In this way, a negative thought can also fester in your mind and try to convince you that you are in fact what you think of yourself. These are the “problem-saturated stories.”

Like many others, narrative therapy carries a political and social agenda- to help individuals liberate themselves from their culture dominated problem-saturated stories. These stories are ‘distorted,’ ‘disempowering,’ and ‘unhelpful’ assumptions that dominate our narratives; sometimes to a point where it might seem unlikely that an alternate story exists. At times these problem stories can be very difficult/ uncomfortable even just to listen to; these include stories and experiences of injustice especially those concerning race, gender or religion.

The problem story paints the picture of an event or an experience in such a way that it cripples the reality of the storyteller, making it seem like there’s no end to the problem and nothing can be changed. The narrative therapist will try to flip this situation by showing the narrator that there are visible choices and responses s/he can make to change the dominant problem story. The therapist helps the narrator tell his/her story from a different point of view, one that makes them more powerful, bigger and stronger than the problem.

Narrative therapy aims to brand the narrator as the expert in his/ her experience through capitalizing on the individual’s story-telling tendencies. The uniqueness of our cultures and societies birth different dominant discourses which can influence our personal narratives and become our realities.

If you think you are incompetent, why do you think that? Is it because someone once said it? Or because you hear it everywhere you go? Or have you been thinking that you’re incompetent after failing to reach a goal you once set?

Now, if you have a friend who is actually incompetent, will you tell him/her that s/he is incompetent to their face? And keep telling them daily that they are incompetent? Will you remind them every time they are called to do a task that they are incompetent?

We probably won’t. We actually won’t.

As social beings, we are bound by unseen and unwritten codes of conduct that keep us in check. These norms allow us to exist with other people peacefully, and we all strive for peace- not world peace (unlike many public figures!) but peace of mind. We all want to relax after a long day’s work. If you’re someone who wants to keep grinding, then you’ll probably strive for your own type of peace once you reach your ultimate goal.

With that said, why won’t we repeatedly tell our friends of their shortcomings? Why don’t we remind them always about how incompetent they are? Why do we refrain from pointing out their lack of ability to do something all the time?

We are conscious of their emotions. We are wary of our mindless negative talk. We are careful not to hurt them or their feelings. We are putting their feelings above everything else. We don’t want to hurt them. We want to maintain the peace between us.

Then if we go through this sensitive, self-aware, careful path for someone else’s feelings, why don’t we do the same for our own?  Why does hurting someone else’s feelings carry so much more weight than your own? How can you claim to love someone else, but not yourself?

If you won’t call someone else incompetent, unlovable, a hopeless cause, then why are you telling yourself the same every single day? Why live in a narrative that pulls you down under when you have the power and the capability to change it all? You do! You are the narrator of your life story. What you say and think about yourself manifests itself and makes its way through to the world outside. Therefore, you are quite literally what you think!

From the perspective of the therapist, these dominant discourses play the most vital role in creating the problem stories which bring people to therapy in the first place. Unlike most therapies, narrative therapy is focused on the way people construct meaning rather than on the way people behave. The prime detail in therapy is to separate the person from their problem so that the issues are externalized, creating a clear distinction between “an individual with problems” and a “problematic individual.”

Narrative therapy believes that all people have good intentions and don’t need or want problems. Which stands true because who wants to be prematurely bald, constantly burdened, stressed out and on edge? As the goal of therapy is to separate the person from the problem, once this is done, people are free to create and re-author their own stories. The therapists seeks to UN-label individuals as “the problem”

There exists a notion in existential psychology that believes in a world with no inherent meaning. (A detailed story for the next blog!) If there is no meaning in existence then people can create their own meaning. There is no absolute truth because people can have multiple interpretations of a single event/experience. Narrative therapy encourages people to create their own stories and negate the “universal or absolute truths” that do not necessarily apply to them. Finding meaning and purpose in your life that serves you and your truth is the final goal.

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Take care of your body: Our brain is always ‘alive’ and working, taking care of essential internal activities such as breathing and keeping the heart beating. Just like fuel to engine, the brain needs its own fuel that comes from the food that we consume. Therefore, we are, quite literally, what we eat! It goes without saying that being in good physical health contributes to better mental health. It gives you ample energy to get through the day; even adding exercising and keeping your body active- which has been found to reduce anxiety and depression. Regular exercise can also help you sleep better at night, decreasing the likelihood of developing stress symptoms.

Stress management: Stressors can come from different sources depending on where, who and what we engage with, in our daily lives. A major contributor to mental health issues is stress, which if gone untreated, carry the risk of developing into complex mental disorders. Stress management techniques vary from person to person because we all experience stress differently and thus, deal with it differently. These techniques allow us to be calm in the face of adversity, build resilience and even develop healthy coping strategies. One important step in stress management is to identify the source of stress and learn to cope with it through different methods such as breathing exercises, meditation, relaxation techniques and even exercise. It is advisable to completely eliminate the source of stress whenever possible, for example, ending an abusive relationship or quitting a job that is causing too much stress.

Set realistic goals- For many of us, life goals change as we grow older- from wanting to be a superhero when we were children to becoming an engineer or a writer. Unlike this transition from childhood ambitions to more realistic goals, as adults, we sometimes tend to set unattainable goals for ourselves that eventually lands us in fatigue and burnout. Unaware of our capabilities, sometimes we aim much higher than humanly possible and feel discouraged when we do not reach them. Therefore, when we know our own capabilities and lay down a set of smaller, attainable, realistic and manageable goals, we have a higher chance at achieving them and will keep us feeling more motivated.

Break the monotony: A vacation to an exotic island, a trip around the world, going to a concert, taking your family or friends to a new restaurant, trying out a new look,  even just reading a new book. Changes, small or big, can have a positive impact on your mental health. A monotonous life has been found to have detrimental effects on the brain such as a decline of cognitive functioning. Monotony reduces your life into an endless cycle of dull and uninteresting chore-like moments that are repetitive, sometimes leading to boredom and loneliness or even depression. Taking the time to unwind and do something that breaks the monotony will positively impact your mental health; like a breath of fresh air, your brain will automatically register new activity and increase performance.

Socialize: Being social animals, we are attracted towards building relationships and we strive for companionship. Support systems hold immense value in the psychology of a person. Surrounding yourself with people you like to spend time with, people who share your thoughts and experiences or even those who challenge you in life is key to building and maintaining a stable mental health. Socializing can also be practiced through altruism or giving yourself to society like volunteering at community events. This gives you a sense of belongingness that is essential to a person’s growth towards self actualization, increasing self esteem, and even finding your own identity.

Find an outlet: Some people like to write, some like to paint, some like to make music while others might enjoy pottery, sculpting, and an endless number of hobbies. All these are potential outlets for healthy venting. Doing whatever makes you feel good about yourself, anything that calms you down when you feel agitated or stressed can be very therapeutic.

Seek help when in need: The most important step in taking care of your own mental health is knowing when you need help and realizing you need help. It is fair to say that we still suffer from stigmatization when it comes to mental health.  Some are scared to ask for help, afraid to look vulnerable and weak while some live in denial that no help is needed. Sometimes we are caught up in wanting to be strong for someone else that we tend to neglect obvious red flags in our own mental health. Love yourself enough to want to do what is best for you. When you accept help, you are already on your way to recovery. We should normalize looking out for ourselves because at the end of the day, if we don’t look out for ourselves, who will?

It is important to note that we are all unique human beings and we all deal with issues differently. There is no hard and fast rule about which way is better than the other- some methods may work for you while others may not. If the need arises, seek professional help as soon as possible and gradually work towards developing a stronger and better mental health.

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