What I learned from my first psychotherapy session
As someone who struggled with mental health since high school, I have always dreaded thinking about getting help. The stigma surrounding talking to a mental health provider is something that I avoided for years which led to the continuous decline of my mental health.
Thankfully as I grew older, the opinion of other people starts to mean less to me as I started to focus more on what will help me instead of caring about what other people want to see. With this new found courage, I finally decided to get help with BCH by my side.
BCH is the reason why I could afford the first psychotherapy session which gave me the space I needed to be myself without judgement. In this first meeting, I have already learned some lessons that I want to share because it might help someone who needs it.
Emotions give us information
The lesson that stood out most to me is when the psychologist assigned to me said that emotions give us information. She said that there is no negative emotions. All emotions are neutral and they all serve their own purpose.
For example, fear is there to help you know that you need to get away from danger. Anger is there to let you know that something is crossing your boundaries. These emotions are usually given a bad reputation but they serve their own purpose.
When we ignore these so-called negative emotions, we also deny to acknowledge some information that would help us.
This is where toxic positivity comes in. When we try to be happy all the time or encourage others to think positively all the time, we are encouraging them to ignore parts of themselves.
What we can do instead is to acknowledge our emotions with no judgement. If we feel anger about something, instead of thinking that we should just be happy for what we have, we can be curious about what this anger is telling us. In this way, we can learn from what our emotions are telling us instead of dismissing them.
You do not have to accept your trauma
One thing that scared me before going to therapy is the possibility of hearing someone say that I have to forgive the person who caused my trauma or that I have to accept that the trauma happened for a reason.
I knew that if I had heard this from the first session, there would be no next session.
But surprisingly, my psychologist said that I do not have to accept my trauma since that situation is something that I ahould have never experienced. We agreed that it was not something that needed to happen so it is okay if I choose to never accept it. However, it is also important that I learn how to control my reaction when I am reminded of the trauma.
The trauma is not my fault, but healing is up to me. She said that while I can not control what happened in the past, I can control how the trauma will affect my life.
In my case, I was ready to unravel my trauma in a judgement-free environment, and learn better coping mechanisms. So the psychologist gave me some new approach to try since she knows that I probably tried a lot of things just to get by.
Getting better is my responsibility
The psychologist is there to guide me and give me some foundation that I need to have better coping mechanisms. However, her guidance will not help me at all if I refuse to work with her.
Psychotherapy is a work that requires the two of us to help each other. She will help me find better coping mechanisms, and I will help her in helping me.
She can not magically make me better without knowing what specific way I want to get better. She can not help me be better if I refuse to unlearn my harmful coping mechanisms.
So psychotherapy needs effort from both of us for it to be effective.
Closing words
The first psychotherapy is difficult. I could not stop crying when I was relating my story to the psychologist.
I was surprised since I can not remember the last time I cried for myself. It was relieving to let my emotions out without feeling the need to hide it or to pretend that I am okay.
I think that at this point of my life, I am ready to undergo psychotherapy since I am no longer afraid in telling what I had gone through. I am ready to face my past and to learn better ways to handle how I react to certain situations.
Thank you for reading this article!
If you want to read some more articles of mine, I have monthly summaries here:
December 2021 Articles Summary
November 2021 Articles Summary
When i dont feel okey i just cry them after that i feel a little relieved. You are a brave person to face your past. Fighting!