Therapy as self-care

As a therapist I work with clients daily to help them overcome a lack of confidence, anxiety etc and decided after a recent bereavement in the family that maybe I could take a leaf out of my own book and seek some therapy for myself as a form of self-care, but also to experience what my clients do when they come through the door.

This started with a vague idea that something needed to change and an email and brief zoom call, resulting in an appointment.

That was the easy part, because there was then a cascading flow of thoughts…. What would I talk about?…. Am I ready to make some changes?........what if I become over emotional?....How do I make the best use of this time, after all its not cheap to see a therapist!

The day dawned and suddenly my mind was a total blank….. I have nothing to talk about…..I’m fine really…… Do I really need to do this? etc etc.

I committed to a series of appointments over a 3 month period and totally trusted my therapist after asking around for recommendations and feeling reassured that we had a good connection.

It was odd for me being on the other side of the therapy relationship and she immediately put me at ease so that I found talking about my history and the way that I had interpreted events in my past, flowed and created eddies and whirlpools of thought, that gave way to clarity, and gradually a new understanding of my past and how it affects my present, and consequently that way I imagine my future.

I recognise that I am a work in progress, as we all are. I’m grateful for the ongoing support and therapy that I receive following on from time to time to make sense of events as they happen and I believe that it has made me a better therapist.