What Starting Therapy Can Feel Like?

There’s a particular way psychotherapy is often seen. You probably know the image I mean: soft lighting, a strategically positioned plant, and two people sitting opposite each other in comfy chairs.

And alongside that comes the language around therapy: safe space, non-judgemental, holding space, support.

None of this is wrong, as it is often a description of the conditions of the space, yet mostly how we as therapists see it from our side of the room.

From the other side of the room, therapy starts somewhat differently.

You usually begin by finding a stranger on the internet. You look through a few websites and read some profiles, people smiling reassuringly at the camera, and eventually choose someone.

Then you book an appointment with this person and, often within the first hour, start telling them things you may not talk about with many people in your life. And despite the beautiful photos, the extensive list of degrees and trainings, the kind smile and the promise of a non-judgemental space, you don't actually know this person yet.

You might worry about what they'll think of you, will you like their approach, whether they'll understand you, whether you'll say something wrong, or even whether you're doing therapy properly. Sitting in front of someone whose attention is suddenly focused on you can feel exposing.

There's also the power difference, even when we try very hard to make therapy collaborative. You've come because you're asking for help and support. The therapist has the professional role, the training and the language. They may be taking notes. They know how therapy works; you may have no idea what is supposed to happen next.

And the therapist's website and degrees can't remove that uncertainty. Of course, it’s not an ordinary meeting between two people. But this meeting, like any meeting between two humans, has potential. And sometimes that possibility is quite small. Maybe we’ve spent time noticing what happens when your mum comments on the way you dress, and how quickly you find yourself explaining, defending or doubting yourself. The next time she says, “I don’t like what you’re wearing,” there might be another possibility available to you: “Yeah, thanks, Mum. I like it.”

You may or may not choose it.

The point is that now it's a possibility.

This is one of the ways of understanding change in therapy. It doesn't always mean becoming a different person or learning the “right” way to respond. Sometimes change is that where there used to be one automatic way forward, there is now more than one.

What you do with that possibility is still yours.