Is therapy a luxury or is that fear talking? (Part 2: Fear of failure)

Last week I posted Part 1, which focused on sparking curiosity about what you value and prioritise. I wanted to get you thinking about the choices that you’re making and whether those choices are helping you or hindering you from living your best life. Often we choose to allocate our money and/or time to things other than therapy because we consider therapy a luxury, not a necessity. Part 1 considered some possible explanations for this, which I will build on here by considering fear as an emotional driver: Fear of failure, fear of success, and fear of having your belief systems (and identity) challenged. 

As I mentioned in Part 1, therapy works on long-term commitment and change - it took you a number of years to become the person that you are, so immediate change is unlikely and, if it does miraculously happen, often unsustainable. This is akin to starting an exercise and diet program; it is unlikely to produce results after 2-3 gym sessions, and if it does, I’m willing to bet it’s based on a radical calorie deficit that would be very difficult to sustain long-term. Similarly, you need to put time and money into therapy sessions, as well as put energy in outside of sessions to manifest the ‘learning’ in your life. 

It’s a big commitment - thus, there’s a big fear of failure. What if this investment reaps no reward? Or, as many of us phrase it, “I just don’t think it will help me. I can see how it’s useful for other people but not for me”

What concerns me with that mentality is that therapy is seen the same way as drugs are - you take them and they work; you go to therapy and it works. IT works. As though IT is something that’s done TO you, and all you have to do is show up. The therapist becomes some sort of magical fairy who can simply bestow answers and knowledge upon you that *poof* alters the core of your very being. The big secret? Us therapists don’t have all the answers. We have years of research and study and practical application and clinical judgement, but we can’t just DO things to you that will solve all your problems. 

(If you’ve seen the Billy Connolly sketch… “DO THINGS TO ME” I hope you’re having a giggle. If not, Google it!)

The only sure-fire way to reap zero reward from therapy is to not engage with it. 

(Of course, you might have a ‘bad’ therapist, whatever that means to you. However, engaging in therapy means communicating with your therapist about your concerns, thinking about the relationship you have with that person and making active decisions whether you stay or find someone you feel you click better with. Obviously you are not the only one with responsibility in the therapeutic relationship, but engaging in therapy does mean taking responsibility for making a change if needed)

Engaging in therapy also means active participation in the process, You’ve got to find a way to be honest with your therapist, which is often hard because it may be the first time you’ve ever truly been honest with yourself. You’ve got to hold up a mirror and examine not only what has got you to this point, but what you will do about it to create the life you want. Therapy can strip away your rationalisations and denial, and ask you to look right down the barrel of what scares you the most. It’s not an easy task and it requires a lot of courage to actively engage in self-confrontation and engage in the relationship with your therapist. 

You put yourself on the line and fear of failure is a huge deterrent; what if you open yourself up and things don’t go well? 

This is where communication with your therapist is important. They are there to ‘hold the space’ for you and support you through the process, so that you can actively participate. Things will stall when you choose self-denial or rationalisations over honesty, because that’s when your mind/self/brain/unconscious/whatever-you-want-to-call-it has chosen defensiveness and protection over confrontation and change. It is easier to maintain the current state of affairs than to change, because the current state of affairs is predictable (see "Is your life easy now?")… so, failure in therapy can come at any point where you are unwilling to delve further; when your bravery has reached its limit and you need to step back.

However, what I believe is important here is the idea of “right now”. You are unwilling to delve, honestly, into that topic right now… you aren’t courageous enough right now to face that reality… your bravery has hit its limit right now… Just because you hold yourself back in this present moment does not mean that state will last forever. Your life is constantly in flux; at stressful times you may not have enough mental resources to confront your demons, but when the additional stress subsides your mental capacity increases and you may change your mind. So, engaging in therapy also means knowing when to pull back from the big demons. If you open a Pandoras box of ‘stuff’ right in the middle of having your in-laws stay for a month, or moving house, or changing jobs, you might precipitate a crisis or be too focused on the additional stress that you don’t really address the boxed stuff. What do you need from therapy right now to get the most out of it?

The last thing I want to address is that therapy is not always about solutions or fixing problems by direct action. The ‘drug model’ idea of therapy (“do this *poof* you’re fixed”) is problematic when you’re facing things in life that cannot be fixed or solved or changed. When the way forward is acceptance, or coming to terms with the difficulty and suffering inherent in life, it’s easy to feel angry at the apparent failure of therapy to produce an actionable solution. Grief is one such example - nothing you can do will bring someone back from the dead, so therapy cannot be about fixing it. 

Another example from my personal life was when I had to come to terms with being responsible for changing my belief system and behaviour patterns, despite the fact that these developed as a result of someone else’s actions. Realising I had to ‘fix’ something that was not ‘broken’ by me was a hurdle of acceptance I had to manage before I could even begin to contemplate change! Accepting that life really isn’t fair, despite my apparent belief in a karma-like system, was a long road that did not have a clear solution or plan of attack.

Realistically, “failure” is such a black-and-white term, and the idea that therapy will fail leaves you very little wiggle room to be human. It is an almost impossible feat to walk into therapy and confront your deepest darkest demons without some form of ‘failure’ along the way. What’s important is that you get back up on your metaphorical horse and persist; that’s you building resilience, which…wait for it…is therapy working!

(See what I did there? You did, and now you're rolling your eyes...)

Eep, sorry, one last thing (I promise!)… let’s also say that, for whatever reason, your therapist sucks, or their modality is ridiculous… I haven’t addressed this in great detail because you have no control over that except to walk away if you disagree with it. There is not much utility in focusing on therapy failing because of someone/something else, because the only thing you have control over is yourself - and even that can be debatable! If you do everything in your power to ensure that it succeeds, there is a much higher chance of it succeeding. If you choose not to engage or communicate, it’s more likely to ‘fail’. In those circumstances you cannot walk away thinking “therapy doesn’t work” because you can’t honestly say to yourself “I did everything in my power to allow therapy to work, so it must be a problem with the therapy”. 

The next segment will address the fear of success, followed by the fear of having your belief systems and identity challenged. 

Sophie Gray

sophie.gray@thinkgray.com

www.thinkgray.com