Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone will help you feel more comfortable with using therapy to improve your mental health by giving a candid look into how therapy really works from the point of view of an experienced therapist who also found herself needing it.

The first question you’ll get when you go into a therapist’s office will be some version of, “Tell me what brings you here today?” The answer to this question is what is known as the presenting problem. It’s the problem that they come in with hopes of finding a solution. Sometimes it can be something specific, but often it’s something more general, such as feeling “trapped.”

Whatever this problem is, it’s usually not the real underlying problem. If they want a real solution, the therapist needs to discover the underlying problem. An example of this Gottlieb encountered was a patient she calls John. He came in with general problems like insomnia and problems with his wife and his job. He came wanting more sleep and a place to vent about his personal issues.

It turned out, however, that his problems were a lot deeper than they seemed. It took six months of inappropriate behavior such as texting during their conversations and interrupting before she learned of his traumatic past.

His mother was hit by a car and killed when he was six, and his young son died in a car accident. These events led to him developing emotional problems such as not being able to be vulnerable and suppressing his grief. Once he learned to acknowledge his past and grief and be more vulnerable, he could solve his problems.

If there’s one thing we hate as human beings, it’s painful emotions. Loneliness, sadness, stress, can be so powerful that they can make you physically ill.

Instead of dwelling on the painful things of our past, many of us tend to push them deep inside because it seems easier, but in the long term is worse. We may use defense mechanisms to ward off the threat of therapy opening our old wounds.

When the author was left by her longtime boyfriend, she would fixate on his misdeeds as a defense mechanism. But it took up all of the time in the therapy sessions, preventing them from facing the real underlying problems. Her therapist was able to pick up on helpful clues though.

She would say things about her life being “half over.” This clued him in that there was more on her mind then the end of her relationship—- she was also dealing with distress over the end of her life one day. When they addressed this they could work on coping with those feelings.