#121: Therapy
I’ve been going to Therapy for about 3 months now, once a week.
At first I didn’t tell that many people because I was aware of people’s misconceptions about therapy. Which is ironic given the work I do and the mission I am on with Sanctus, but still I fell prey to the fear of judgement and didn’t tell too many people.
I was worried that people wouldn’t get it and I couldn’t be bothered to have to deal with someone else’s response.
Given therapy is typically more intense than coaching and is known to go deeper, I didn’t want people to think there’s something “wrong with me."
The truth is, there is something wrong with me.
If something being “wrong with me” is defined by me being a human who has grown up on earth and has all the same insecurities, anxieties, doubts, complexities and idiosyncrasies as every other person on the planet.
Then by that logic, yes there absolutely is something wrong with me.
By that same logic there is something wrong with every single one of us.
Therapy comes loaded with misconceptions and a bit of an “ooohhhh, everything alright?” attached to it.
The truth is, yes actually everything is fine, but also no it’s not at all. That’s life, that’s my life anyway.
Since I’ve started going I can’t really imagine what I was doing before, without having 50 minutes to talk to someone intently focused on me once a week.
I find life to be quite hard sometimes, so having a place where I can talk about the hard-ness, well that’s great.
I get myself in a bit of tizz you see. Questioning things, doubting things and then there’s these little buggers called emotions and feelings and goodness I have no idea what to do with those.
So if I’m alive for 168 hours a week (albeit asleep for approximately 56 of the hours), why would I not spend one of those hours talking about me and myself and my feelings and all the rest of it.
That’s less than 1% of my weekly waking hours in therapy, talking to a pro about what’s going on.
It’s become a bit of a no brainer for me.
It’s hard for me to say what I’ve learned or what I’ve got out of it.
In truth, I’m a bit sick of learning and getting stuff out of things.
I “do” a lot and I’m great at it, I’m very good at doing things and measuring things and then doing more things with what I’ve learned from the measurements.
Can’t I just be?
That’s what therapy is for me, it’s a space to be.
Nothing else, nothing more, just being.
I used to think that by going into therapy and delving into the inner most caverns of my complex psyche I would “work things out” and I’d understand myself more.
That is true in part, yet what I am finding the most valuable is to just be with myself and to feel things, not to analyse things.
So if i am angry, be angry. Don’t think about being angry or why I am angry or what it’s like to be angry.
Just be angry.
I am sure I will write more about therapy.
For now I just wanted to tell you all that I’ve been seeing someone for a while, once a week and it’s been great.
I am sure there are loads of people reading this who have been or are in therapy, so I hope this newsletter can help us all talk more openly about the work we’re doing on ourselves (just look at this linkedin post as an example).
If you’re interested in finding out more about therapy, then have a look at the Sanctus Directory. I found my guy on here and he’s a legend. Everyone comes recommended from the Sanctus Coaching Team.
I’m not going to introduce you to my guy, because I don’t think he’s got capacity for 1000 newsletter readers! (And going through the process of reaching out yourself is important I think).
See you next week,
James x
p.s I’ve not been responding, but I still love responses to know it’s landed so if my writing does, I always appreciate a response :)