Reclaim You- Therapy Myths
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In this episode, Sarah and Emily bust common myths about therapy. They discuss the misconception that you have to be struggling to go to therapy, the idea that therapy leads to major insights every session, and the belief that something is wrong if progress in therapy isn't happening quickly. They also address the myth that therapy is just talking or receiving advice from your therapist, the misconception that you're not allowed to give feedback to your therapist, and the idea that you're not allowed to ask your therapist questions about themselves. Finally, they debunk the myth that therapists have it all together.
Takeaways
Therapy is not just for people who are struggling; it can benefit anyone, regardless of their specific issues or goals.
Progress in therapy is a gradual process and major insights may not happen in every session.
Therapy is a collaborative process, and therapists are there to support and guide clients, not just give advice.
Clients are encouraged to provide feedback to their therapists and ask questions about their therapist's background or experience.
Therapists are human too and have their own struggles.
Below are the episode referenced in today's episdoe:
https://www.sarahherstichlcsw.com/blog/self-care-according-to-trauma-therapist-near-me
https://www.sarahherstichlcsw.com/blog/breaking-up-with-your-therapist
Thanks for listening to Reclaim You with Reclaim Therapy!
To learn more about Reclaim Therapy and how to work with a therapist on the team, head to www.reclaimtherapy.org.
Be sure to comment, like and subscribe here, or on YouTube and come follow along on Instagram!
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[00:01] Sarah: Hi, there. Welcome to reclaim you, a podcast published by the reclaim therapy team. Join us as we share stories, tools, and insights on how to reclaim you in the wake of trauma, disordered eating, and body shame. Grab your coffee, tea, or your favorite snack and get cozy because we're about to dive in.
[00:19] Sarah: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to reclaim you. Emily's here today, and we're going to do some mythbusting.
[00:26] Emily: Yeah.
[00:27] Emily: Hi, everybody. Hey.
[00:29] Sarah: How you doing?
[00:30] Emily: Good.
[00:31] Sarah: How are. Good, good. Emily had a fun idea of doing some myth busting around therapy. I didn't say that. Well, you say it.
[00:44] Emily: I mean, I feel like that's fine. Yeah. We're going to bust some therapy myths.
[00:49] Sarah: That's it. We're going to bust some therapy myths.
[00:53] Emily: Yeah.
[00:55] Sarah: I think these are a lot of questions that we get from folks we work with or that we maybe see on the Internet and things like that.
[01:04] Emily: Yeah.
[01:05] Emily: And I think that some of these are very common things that come up for people in therapy and are things that people feel like they're not allowed to talk to their therapist about. So, yeah, let's just get ahead of it. Totally.
[01:20] Sarah: I'm with you. I'm with you.
[01:21] Emily: Let's fill the tea.
[01:23] Emily: Yeah.
[01:23] Sarah: Oh, I love that. Let's fill the tea. We have a pillow in the office that says spill the tea.
[01:29] Emily: I love. It's my favorite pillow.
[01:30] Emily: Yeah.
[01:31] Emily: Oh, I love that pillow, too. That's a good one. That's a good.
[01:34] Sarah: Should have one.
[01:35] Emily: Yeah.
[01:35] Emily: I want that in my house, like, right when you come in the door.
[01:40] Sarah: All right, so first myth. We're going to myth bust. You have to be struggling to go to therapy or have a problem to talk about in every session.
[01:52] Emily: Spill the tea. Yeah. I think it's a huge block for people who maybe want to go to therapy or could really benefit from therapy, but it's that, like, oh, maybe I knew someone who went to therapy and they had this big thing that they were working through or how therapy is represented in the media. It's always this very severe, time sensitive thing, and I think that people think, oh, well, the thing that I want to work on isn't like that. So should I even go? Am I wasting my time? Am I wasting the therapist time? No. Therapy is. I think therapy is for everyone. And there are so many things that we can work on. It doesn't have to be. I mean, it can be a big trauma or something like that, but it can also be. It can be so many things. I can't even think of one thing because it truly can be anything. And I think that ties into, even in starting therapy or when people are in therapy and I've kind of made progress, it's like, oh, well, I don't have anything to fix this session. Well, that's okay. We can talk about strengths. We can talk about goals. We can talk about things that you've already accomplished. We can brainstorm. It doesn't always have to be something to fix every single time. And that's okay. Yeah, totally.
[03:26] Sarah: It feels like the underscore is that if you're suffering, you deserve support, right?
[03:34] Emily: Yeah.
[03:35] Sarah: If you want to get clear on your values, you deserve support. Anything.
[03:41] Emily: Yeah. You just deserve support. Like, there doesn't have to be a qualifier there.
[03:49] Sarah: Totally. So, the next myth we have to bust is therapy leads to major insights every session.
[04:02] Emily: That's another big one. That is another big one. And I think that that also comes from how therapy is often represented. It seems like you go in and the therapist drops all this knowledge and these big truth bombs, and it's like, oh, my God. I never thought about how this thing that happened when I was five changed the entire course of my life. That's not how it works. A lot of times, it's slow work. We have to get to know each other. We have to kind of build that relationship and those big revelations and those big realizations, those are going to come over time. And I actually think that that's more beneficial to kind of do that work slowly so that we don't end up getting overwhelmed, because that's also the last thing that we want to do, is bring a client in, bring all this stuff up, dig too deep, too fast, and then run the risk of making things much worse? I know it can feel frustrating sometimes of, like, why is this work feeling slow? Or why is it I don't come in on the first session, have it all figured out? And I totally get that that's frustrating. And that slow, meaningful work, I think, is more impactful and, honestly, longer lasting.
[05:30] Sarah: Yeah, for sure. And I can relate to that in some ways of wanting to just get to it. Let's do it. Let's dig in. I mean, from the client side is what I mean. I've been dealing with this for too long. Let's just do the thing. And you're so right. I tell my clients all the time, there's a reason why we're focusing on having lots of resources to help you stay afloat for when we crack the door open to see what's behind there or where things are rooted in. So you're right. It's such slow and purposeful work. It's all for a purpose.
[06:10] Emily: And I think sometimes when a client is coming in, there's something going on. It's like, okay, I want to resolve this as quickly as possible. I think sometimes that also doesn't leave room for that relationship building side of things. And also, other things are going to come up week to week, and you're allowed to be like, okay, let's pause on that goal that I came in with. Maybe I want to talk about how I had a bad week at work or I had a fight with my partner, or another stressor came up. We're allowed to shift and kind of weave back and forth. And I think sometimes when it's like, oh, I have to have these massive insights every session. Sometimes we'll neglect bringing up other things that could be helpful to touch on.
[06:59] Sarah: Yeah, I'm thinking of, like, boring self care, right. How we really encourage people to engage in boring self care, things that aren't glamorous and, like manicures and massages and facials and whatever. Bubble baths.
[07:14] Emily: Right?
[07:15] Sarah: Sure. Those are well and fine if you enjoy those. But the little things, like slowing down and starting to understand what it's like to feel a little bit right. These are all the little ways to take care of yourself. I'll link to a blog, or I think it was a podcast Casey and I recorded on boring self care. I can link to that. But it's the same thing of building the safety and the relationship with your.
[07:39] Emily: Therapist, like you said.
[07:40] Sarah: And these little, teeny, tiny, small steps can lead to the bigger things.
[07:47] Emily: Yeah. I think it's important for the client and the therapist to remind themselves nobody's doing anything wrong. If there's not these massive breakthroughs every session. The client is not doing anything wrong. It's just like you were saying, it's slow, purposeful work, and they will come, but it doesn't happen right away.
[08:14] Sarah: And so, in alignment with that is the myth that you're going to make progress. I'm using your quote unquote progress super fast. So it goes hand in hand with that other myth.
[08:25] Emily: Yeah, absolutely. I think they're almost like one and the same progress. I think the true, meaningful progress is going to happen slowly over time, as you feel comfortable in therapeutic relationship. And that doesn't happen the first session.
[08:43] Emily: Yeah.
[08:43] Sarah: We have to flip progress on its head.
[08:45] Emily: Right.
[08:46] Sarah: The idea of, like, what is progress? And is progress related to this pressured kind of hyper vigilance of getting it all figured out right now or having the big breakthroughs right now. How can we track that of what feels pressured, what feels like you have to do, what feels like you have to have the breakthrough? And how does that also contribute to the way that you're showing up in the world?
[09:07] Emily: Right.
[09:08] Sarah: It's like this trend of go go, which our culture promotes, when maybe progress is sitting with the discomfort of slowing down.
[09:17] Emily: Right.
[09:17] Sarah: Like that can just be progress.
[09:20] Emily: Yeah. I think that's another really important point, is redefining progress, because I'm thinking of anxiety, for an example, working with clients who have anxiety, and I see that they're making progress. I see that the physical symptoms of anxiety are getting better. They're sleeping better, their appetite is back, they're able to connect with others. But that anxiety is still there because it doesn't necessarily go away. To a certain extent, we're going to have some anxiety. That's just how we're built. It motivates us. There is some kind of healthy stress, and it doesn't always go away. So it's like, oh, but I still feel anxious or I still feel stressed. And it's like progress doesn't have to be that symptom completely going away.
[10:14] Sarah: It's disappearing forever.
[10:16] Emily: Yeah, it's like, oh, it's here, but I'm managing it, or it's not completely blinded by it.
[10:25] Sarah: Yeah. So the next one we've got, this is a good one. Therapy is just talking, or your therapist talking at you. And another way to put it is therapy is just about your therapist giving you advice.
[10:41] Emily: Yeah, this one really gets me, because, again, I just feel like therapy is just represented in this totally bogus way. That's not actually how it works. So I get why clients come in with that expectation. I feel like when I first started doing therapy, way back in the day, I thought the same thing. I think it ends up being frustrating for the client and the therapist, because on the one hand, the client's like, okay, I'm here, fix me. And then on the other hand, the therapist is like, I need a little bit more. What's going on? What's going to happen? Where are you at? So I think this one can lead to some awkward situations where you think of people just kind of like, sitting and staring at each other, which is not what we want at all, but it's a really collaborative process. I think that I love when clients come in and we get clear about goals, and each week we do a check in, but then they're like, you know what? This came up, and this is what I want to work on this week. That's really helpful for me to be like, okay, let's talk about it, or let's bring up some grounding work. Maybe we're doing some EMDR. There's so many different things. But hearing from the client, specifically what they're experiencing, what they feel like they're doing, well, what they feel like they want to work on, is then easy for me to kind of come in with a framework of like, okay, let's try this and see how it feels.
[12:19] Emily: Yeah.
[12:20] Sarah: And I think it's really this process of not imparting our opinions.
[12:25] Emily: Right.
[12:26] Sarah: Our opinions of what people should, quote unquote or shouldn't do, but supporting clients to come home to what they think and what they feel is right for them.
[12:37] Emily: Because.
[12:40] Sarah: I have opinions, because I care about people. I care about the folks that I work with really deeply. And so, of course I have opinions, but that's my business. And that's why I have supervision and consultation and peer groups and all of the things. It's not my job to impart that onto clients. And sometimes clients directly ask, I want your advice. I want your opinion. And sometimes I'll give it right. And lots of times I'll support them in sharing what they hope that I'm going to say, because maybe that's really what they want to do or what.
[13:14] Emily: They need or whatever it is.
[13:16] Sarah: There's so much nuance to know, but it's not, hey, Emily, I need your advice. Should I break up with this guy? And you're not going to be like, yeah, dump his ***.
[13:24] Emily: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that, too. Therapists kind of fall into that medical professional realm, and I feel like there's a lot of intimidation there sometimes, especially with doctors, that it's like, oh, they're the professional, they're the expert. If they say something that's going to work for me, obviously that has to work for me. But everybody's different. And I think that sometimes if someone's had that experience with a therapist where they go in and they're like, do this, this and this, and then they try it and it doesn't work for them because not everything's going to work for everyone, we're going to feel like we did something wrong. We're going to feel ashamed. We might drop out of therapy and feel like it was our fault. That's not helpful. That doesn't feel good.
[14:10] Sarah: Yeah. It kind of reinforces this yucky kind of hierarchy of power that I think inherently can exist in the therapeutic relationship.
[14:19] Emily: Right.
[14:19] Sarah: It's important to name that.
[14:21] Emily: Yeah.
[14:21] Sarah: You're coming to see a therapist for a service.
[14:24] Emily: Right.
[14:24] Sarah: For a relationship, for support, for treatment. And I think us, in our practice, we try our best to bring it down to a level playing field of human to human. Sure. We have lots of training and we do lots of things so that we have a broad skill set to support people. And we really want to make it equal human as much as we can, while acknowledging there is some power differential. So we don't want to abuse that by providing advice that's going to flip you on your head and be like.
[14:54] Emily: Well, you told me.
[14:55] Emily: Right.
[14:56] Sarah: But it's not our life.
[14:57] Emily: Right? It's not our body. It's not our life.
[14:59] Sarah: We want you to figure it out and support you in doing that.
[15:02] Emily: Right. We're kind of here to co navigate and maybe gently lead at times if that's needed. But with your clients. Right. I always try to tell clients, no one knows you better than you. I don't know you better than you. You're the expert. You know your strengths, you know what you need. Maybe we need to work on getting more in touch with that, but at the end of the day, it needs to come from you.
[15:29] Sarah: Yeah. All right, next one. You're not allowed to give feedback to your therapist.
[15:39] Emily: Again, I think it comes back to that power difference that we just talked about. Like it's the. They're the expert. I can't question it. What if they get mad at me? It's really intimidating, for sure. And there might be some therapists out there that aren't open to feedback, but I think a good therapist, we welcome feedback. I love when clients come in and this thing that we did really helped me, or I tried this thing and it didn't work for me at all. Or can we have more structure in a session? Or can we have less structure in a session? I love getting that because it helps me make sure that we're using the time in a way that's most beneficial to the client. Totally.
[16:26] Sarah: It's reminding me of the podcast recently with Abby about breaking up with your therapist. We talked a lot about this, actually, in people pleasing maybe can make it really hard to provide feedback or ask for a different direction or share that. Maybe needs aren't feeling seen or met or even like your therapist seems distracted or something like that. But all of these things just feel so important to be able to repair the relationship so that you don't feel like you have to part ways because it's not working or you don't feel seen or you don't feel heard. All of those things. Feedback feels so helpful because we also can't read minds.
[17:09] Emily: Right. I was just going to say we're not mom readers. And going back to that, every client is different. Every client has different needs. We can't go in with like a one size fits all or. Okay, this is what's going to work for this person. It's always most helpful to hear that directly from them. Totally.
[17:28] Sarah: And hopefully the relationship feels safe enough or comfortable enough. Maybe it doesn't feel safe, but maybe comfortable enough that exchange can feel okay. Or an email or a text.
[17:42] Emily: Right.
[17:42] Emily: I was going to say, yeah, I would not mind that at all. And I tell clients that if there's feedback, if you want to email me between sessions or text me between sessions and let me know something that worked that didn't work, something that you want to hear more of or less of in our next session, totally do that. I love that.
[18:03] Sarah: Absolutely.
[18:04] Emily: Yeah.
[18:04] Sarah: And so what about you're not allowed to ask your therapist questions about themselves.
[18:13] Emily: Another good one. Another good one. And again, that power, I think it comes back to that relationship of, like, if it's a professional relationship, you shouldn't ask them questions. And I think vice versa for a lot of therapists. I remember when I was in grad school, my professors kind of like just every single class being like, don't tell your clients anything about you. They ask you something, deflect and ask them why they asked you. And that always felt so bad to me. I was like, no, because, yeah, it's not about me. I'm not going to show up to the session and be like, oh, this is what happened for me this week, or this is what's happening in my life. But I think in that relationship building, clients want to know things about you, to feel comfortable with you, and I'm not going to deny that or be like, why are you asking me that? In that situation, it's a person trying to get to know another person because they're going to be sharing very intimate parts of their life with them. And I also think, especially in this work, or really in general, clients want to know that you have experience with what they're going through.
[19:35] Sarah: Yeah.
[19:36] Emily: So I always think that that can be a helpful conversation, too. Yes, I have the education. I have the training, but I also get it because I've been there. I think that those can be really important, really impactful conversations.
[19:52] Sarah: Yeah, definitely. And it feels important just to say it's not. You're logging into session and your therapist is going to be like, well, let me tell you about the argument I had with my partner. Because, man, he sucks.
[20:06] Emily: Right?
[20:07] Emily: We don't like that.
[20:09] Sarah: Or I hear you. Because let me tell you this crazy story about X, Y and Z, right? That's not what we're talking about.
[20:17] Emily: No, absolutely not. But if a client, let's say it's like the first session or something, and they're like, tell me about you. Tell me about your education or what made you want to get into this field. I've had clients ask me if I'm in recovery. I've had clients ask me if I'm married, things like that. I think that there's a purpose for those questions, and I can see how that's helpful in those moments. So I'm not a robot. I'm going to answer the questions. That's okay. I think it helps the relationship as long as, like you were saying, it doesn't become the therapist using the session for their own therapy.
[20:59] Sarah: Yeah, we have our own therapists for that.
[21:02] Emily: Yeah, absolutely.
[21:03] Sarah: And also, just to point out, too, that a lot of the relationships that we have with folks are really long term. So I know for me, many of my clients have seen me through both of my pregnancies and have seen pictures of my children, things like that. So it does become a really kind of sacred relationship where I think there is the sharing of parts of ourselves and parts of our experiences. With consent, of course. But it does. It just makes it so much more human, because if you hear my kids screaming on the other side of this wall, and I'm like, nothing's happening, this isn't impacting me at all.
[21:47] Emily: Right?
[21:48] Sarah: That's robotic. That's not human.
[21:50] Emily: Absolutely.
[21:51] Sarah: Okay, let's do one more. Your therapist has it all together.
[21:58] Emily: That's a good one to end on. We do not. Short answer. We do not. Because we are humans. Yes. That's it. That's all I got. No, we are humans. We're not robots. And I think a lot of times, at least most people that I've met in this field, we get into this field for a reason. And a lot of times we get into this field because we've also dealt with our own struggles with mental health, whether it's an eating disorder, anxiety, depression, addiction, anything, really. We get into this field because we know how hard it is and we want to help people. So this idea that therapists are these pictures of mental health, no one is. We all have our struggles. We've just gone to school and hopefully have done our own therapy and know some things that are helpful in starting to take the power back from some of these struggles.
[23:06] Emily: Yeah.
[23:06] Sarah: Something that I think is really cool about our practice as a little plug. I always say this, too, is that we're just not people who are talking the talk.
[23:16] Emily: Right.
[23:16] Sarah: The clinicians on this team are also walking the walk, whether that's in recovery from an eating disorder or trauma or both. Anxiety. People pleasing. I mean, we talk about people pleasing a lot. Perfectionism.
[23:27] Emily: Right.
[23:28] Sarah: These are things that we do this work for a reason. Like you said, people come into this work for a reason. And we've done a lot of work.
[23:37] Emily: Each of us, and continue to do.
[23:38] Sarah: A lot of work. So we're still maybe a little unhinged, but also are, like, on the path. We're on the path, yeah, absolutely.
[23:48] Emily: And we also just live normal lives outside of mental health struggles. Stressors are going to come up. We're also going to have conflict in relationships. We're going to have family things that come up. We're going to get sick. We're going to have all the normal stressors that everybody else deals with, too. And just because we're therapists doesn't mean that those things just don't get to us. They do. They do, again, because we're just normal people.
[24:19] Sarah: Right? Absolutely. Which, again, is why we have our own therapists and consultants and supervisors and these layers of support to help us navigate it all.
[24:27] Emily: But I think I know personally, and this is even tying in with sometimes purposely sharing. I appreciate when a therapist that I'm working with tells me I've been through something similar or I've had similar struggles. I feel like it normalizes the work, but then it also normalizes that the work kind of ebbs and flows. There's going to be easier times. There's going to be harder times. And that's okay. That's normal.
[25:01] Sarah: Totally. And to add to that, too, is that it's our job as the therapist, or our therapist's job to manage any, what we call countertransference.
[25:12] Emily: Right.
[25:12] Sarah: To acknowledge when things are seeping through the screen or across the room. It's our job to seek support and navigating that. It's never our client's job to take care of that. Like, we can repair it relationally together, but it's our jobs to figure that out outside of session and to repair in session.
[25:33] Emily: Totally.
[25:34] Emily: All right.
[25:34] Sarah: Those are some good ones. We do have a few more, so we could do a part two.
[25:37] Emily: Yeah.
[25:39] Sarah: Anything to add before we go?
[25:42] Emily: I think those were some really good ones. I'm glad we got through all those. And I hope this is a helpful episode. And if it is, yeah, let's do a part two.
[25:53] Emily: Yeah.
[25:54] Sarah: Let us know what you think. Shoot us a message or an email. Yeah, we can do the rest. There's a handful more that we have that we didn't really have time for, but yeah. Well, thanks, Emily.
[26:03] Emily: This is a great idea. This is great. Thank you.
[26:06] Sarah: Yeah. Okay, everybody, we will be back next week for another episode. And until then, take good care.
[26:14] Sarah: Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of reclaim you. Be sure to, like, comment and subscribe and check us out on YouTube at reclaim you. If you're looking to start therapy for trauma, disordered eating or body image concerns, head over to our website at ww reclaimtherapy.org to learn more about us and our work. We'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, take good care of yourself.
Reclaim therapy provides therapy for eating disorders in Horsham, PA along with Trauma Therapy, EMDR Therapy and Therapy for Childhood Trauma near me.
We’re passionate about helping people reclaim their lives from the impact of trauma, diet culture and body shame.
We would love to support you as you Reclaim YOU and the life that you undeniably deserve.