Therapy Isn’t Just for a Crisis: A Wakefield Therapist on Getting to Know Yourself
How therapy in Wakefield can help, even if you are not in crisis
You Don’t Have to Be Falling Apart to Benefit from Therapy
It is really common for people to think of therapy as a means of damage control when something just blew up emotionally, such a coping with a major, unexpected loss or feeling ready to face the effects of a childhood trauma. Therapy can indeed be really helpful in these situations, yet it is also so much more.
Reconsider the role that therapy might be able to play for you…it might help you understand yourself in ways that allow you to feel way more in control of your life. Therapy can help you learn to work with your vulnerabilities so you feel like you can more forward in your life more intentionally and more consistently.
Everyone deserves support if they feel like they are stuck and a therapist in Wakefield can help you, no matter the scope of the challenges that are leading you to start.
Why You Might Feel Unfulfilled Without Knowing Why
Many people come to me for therapy because of a quiet ache that tells them something is missing in their life. Maybe they know what it is, yet they are stuck filling that hole, or maybe they don’t even know what is actually missing. All they know is that they don’t feel fulfilled and they wish they felt better. If you feel this way, you are absolutely deserving to feel better. While I can’t guarantee that we can fill every hole, because that often depends on a lot of external circumstances, I am confident that you can understand what the ache is really trying to tell you and learn ways to live with it more comfortably.
Many people start therapy not quite knowing what they want, yet feeling deeply that something needs to change or that things could be better. That is a great place to start! In therapy with me, we will explore what your version of “better” looks like using some personalized questions to help you envision your version of “better.” Once we have that vision, we can start to understand the current pain points differently and work on soothing them.
Therapy can be very helpful for identifying what the emotional discomfort is all about, and it is often not quite what is expected. After all, if it was clear to you, therapy might not be needed to move forward. Yet if you feel even softly unfulfilled and every time you think about this you twinge, therapy might be really helpful for you.
What It Means to “Get to Know Yourself”
American culture is very focused on getting to know people by their roles and titles. In small talk, people will often ask, “and what do you do for a living?” or “what field are you in?” These can be great conversation starters and indeed can be nice ways to get to know someone and identify common interests. Yet just like you would walk away from a conversation like that not feeling like the other person knew you, you will also not really know yourself if you don’t look beyond your studies and work or basic family structure.
Knowing yourself goes even deeper that your hobbies and special interests, though again, those are important parts of your identity. Knowing yourself gets into what makes you tick the most…where do you feel most at peace? What do you find funny? What makes you feel inadequate? What makes you feel like you matter? What makes you excited and hopeful? These kinds of explorations get more into what makes you unique and starts to paint the picture of your emotional landscape.
By knowing what kinds of things matter to you in what ways, you can then start to anticipate your responses to certain changes in life, and consider alternatives if you don’t like what you expect to feel. Knowing is not the end goal, the end goal is to be able to use that knowledge to navigate your life more adeptly.
For example, a young woman I recently worked with learned that she had a tendency to get very rigid about household chores, particularly laundry, whenever she was stressed by work. If the laundry couldn’t be done to her exacting, rather compulsive standards, she would feel like a wreck emotionally and it was very challenging for her husband to interact with her when she would get overcome with these urges around the laundry. Together, we recognized that having laundry done in very rigid ways was comforting to her when she felt out of control and belittled in other circumstances. By understanding that this was a tool for her to regain control, she understood her urges better, yet the strategy sucked way too much of her time and was damaging to her marriage. She learned to resist the urge and instead to allow herself to feel hurt, to journal to process her feelings, to communicate how she was feeling to her husband, and to keep the laundry in normal patterns instead. While it felt like a small change at times, understanding her way of coping with loss of control by intense urges to rigidly control other things helped her loosen her grip on control and cope really differently in ways that led to relief and connection instead of overwhelm and hostility. This is a small example of how knowing yourself can help you navigate your life in ways that feel much better to you.
The Gift of a Personalized Therapy Approach
Part of me feels badly writing this blog because I am not providing a cute “list of 20 questions to ask yourself to know yourself better.” Yes, these list can be helpful starting points for sure, yet I trust that you hop online to find a million such lists quickly. What I prefer instead is to challenge you to ask yourself what the best questions would be to get to know you in particular.
As a therapist in Wakefield, I always make therapy a highly personal process and rarely rely on standard lists of questions because I often find them to be the work that happens best outside of therapy. Inside of therapy, I like to be much more adaptive and approach it more like a choose-your-own-adventure book, rather than a guidebook. Even earlier today, I unexpectedly learned from someone I have only met with a few times that she loves cats. I’m a huge cat lover over here, and I am so excited that we have this connection now. I’m not sure how I will use it, but now I know that cat references and metaphors are likely to resonate well for this individual. Knowing this has me wonder what it is that she enjoys most about cats because I can assure you, we do not all love the same things about cats just because we love them! Knowing that will likely give me a window into some of her emotional comforts. I know she is struggling deeply with loneliness right now, so I expect there to be some ways to learn about herself and other ways she experiences connection through this knowledge about cats.
Having a therapist you can adapt to your unique interests and goals is a crucial part of feeling like your therapy experience is uniquely yours. Working with a therapist in Wakefield to get to know yourself in new ways can truly allow you not only to understand yourself better and to work with yourself better, but to also bring different aspects of yourself to relationships.
What Changes When You Understand Yourself Better
With a different understanding of yourself, your motivators, your fears and your abilities, you are likely to find decision-making far more simply and straightforward. You are likely to be able to feel more intentional in relationships, knowing what you need and knowing what you can offer with more clarity. In building your decisions and relationships, you will start to feel like your life overall simply makes more sense. When there are aspects that don’t really seem to fit, you will understand why and be able to develop alternatives more easily. Life won’t be perfect, yet you will understand why the imperfections impact you the way that they do, and how to move forward with them, instead of being sidelined by them.
How to Start Even If You’re Not Sure What You Need
I assure you that there are no emotional prerequisites to therapy with me as a therapist in Wakefield. You don’t need to know what your goals are when you start, you don’t even need to know what you want to change. I trust that if you are starting, you want change and we can figure it out together. Curiosity is a major player in therapy with me, not rigid structure. If you have goals and a clear sense of direction that is great, it simply isn’t necessary to start. Early sessions will help you develop this clarity and we will find the path forward that works best for you.
Curious about therapy but not in crisis? No problem! A therapist in Wakefield can help you explore who you are, what you want, and how to feel more fulfilled. Book a free consultation to begin the process.
Whether you are entering therapy for the first time or looking to reconnect with the process, I offer a welcoming, supportive space to explore your challenges and goals.
With the flexibility of in-person and online therapy, we can find a space for therapy in your lifestyle and schedule.
Are you ready to take the next step?
Let’s connect over a free, 15-minute phone consultation for therapy in Wakefield