When You Actually Don’t Need Therapy

You will be surprised (or maybe not) at how many people get lost in their own narratives and faulty evaluations about why they are unhappy, why they struggle, or why they experience unpleasant emotions. Instead of seeing clearly, they build explanations about the existence of this emotion that are often unhelpful, distorted, or even dishonest. They convince themselves that the emotion itself is the problem, that it is the enemy to fight. But this could not be further from the truth.

You might now ask, “But why is anyone doing this to themselves?” And I will tell you, before answering this, a little story of a client:

I have seen him for one session, and he came to see me because he felt inside like “a knot of threads.” A strong emotion, more of a depressed, confused feeling, and he wanted to figure out why and searched for someone with a somatic approach. Of course, I could have said, “Of course, let's explore that, let's look at why you have this feeling, and release it.” He perceived his emotion as being disconnected from his external circumstances, which already was an evaluation mistake on his side about what he was going through, not an emotional problem per-se.

I asked him to describe his life and general struggles, and quite quickly we found out that he is at a tough spot in his life where a lot of decision-making and change needs to happen, changes that, at least subjectively, would temporarily take away his sense of safety. So he avoided taking action, trying to minimize his pain in the short term by not thinking about it, by not confronting it, by not deciding. But of course, this avoidance only led to more anxiety about the things he needed to do, and he soon found himself struggling, depressed, and confused.

The mistake here is believing that the emotion is at fault. But emotions are not wrong; they are signals, they show us our needs and our truth. The challenge is to interpret them honestly and correctly. Instead, he convinced himself (probably not consciously) that his emotion was the real problem, the thing that needed to be eliminated. As quickly as possible. And so, without realizing it, I could have become his accomplice in this crime against his own truth.

So, back to the question: “But why is anyone doing this to themselves?”

The answer:

1. People do this often subconsciously, because it is natural to avoid pain, discomfort, and instability. We do not like to see ourselves as losers, nor do we want to confront our weaknesses.

2. And you have no idea how far people will go to debilitate themselves,, in their mind and in their life, just to not feel bad about themselves, while still avoiding the thing that actually needs to be done to change the situation that makes them feel miserable.

3. It takes real courage to confront what truly scares us. That kind of courage needs practice, patience, and brutal honesty with ourselves. Without it, we can easily disappear into the narratives we build around our anxieties and our lack of action in life.

So, why the title?

Because sometimes, therapy is feeding exactly these debilitating narratives and beliefs about why we are having a certain (most likely negative) emotion, especially if a therapist is not aware and goes with the client’s narrative blindly and without questions, instead of zooming out and seeing the bigger picture and truth. Some of our clients want to convince themselves and us of their own narrative, of the false truth that would justify their avoidance or lack of action, because they have fed it to themselves often enough but yet have not been full, as hunger is not the cause.

So what do we do with this page of text now?

Before you decide that your emotion is the problem, ask yourself rather how this feeling is connected to your actions, your life, your decisions, and... what action you are actually avoiding by focusing on the desire to eliminate this disturbing feeling, and which decision should be made instead.

Because controlling our emotions is not the goal, it is controlling our actions.