Here are several myths and misconceptions about psychotherapy and ways to overcome them.
Therapy can be a helpful, engaging experience where skills attained and lessons learned lead to building a sustainable life of worth.
Approaching these myths and misconceptions directly opens the possibility for active participation in sessions and in life.
You deserve to tell your story. You deserve to take ownership and enhance your knowledge, skills, and abilities to make your life work.
If you would like to get started working with a psychologist, I would like to see how I can help you. To that end, I offer a 20-minute complimentary phone consultation.
Clarifying Myths and Misconceptions of Therapy
Myth/Misconception
Therapy is a pity party.
Clarification
If you think therapy is only about confirming the sadness of your life experience, think again.
Your narrative is the gateway to understanding how experience leads to your conception of yourself and the world around you.
This knowledge can be harnessed to help create new goals with pragmatic strategies and tactics to meet those goals.
Myth/Misconception
In therapy, you dump your problems and leave.
Clarification
Therapy goes beyond the spill it and split mentality.
You can learn to understand the function of your behaviors, the value of your thoughts, and the rationale of your feelings, so that you can make progress building the life you seek.
Clarifying Myths and Misconceptions of Therapists
Myth/Misconception
A therapist who only smiles and nods is helpful.
Clarification
You are seeking support or validation. That makes sense. Too much sugar in the pie makes it too sweet to eat.
Therapists need to validate you beyond smile and nod. Therapists can validate by showing their understanding of what is being said and how it makes sense.
Therapists also need to cheerlead you. Cheerleading offers you the opportunity to feel inspired and motivated that you can make your life work.
Therapists also have to help you with problem solving. Problem solving can range from an all hands on deck approach to figuring out complex problems to evaluating where you’re at in your own thinking and shaping your solutions for improved effectiveness and sustainability.
Myth/Misconception
The life of the therapist will remain a complete mystery.
Clarification
In the service of therapeutic goals and in the name of humanity, the therapist can use targeted self-disclosure to help stimulate understanding, wisdom, and skill acquisition.
By offering insight through personal experience transparent teaching can be available to showcase reality and the process of overcoming obstacles.
Clarifying Myths and Misconceptions of Clients in Therapy
Myth/Misconception
All of this is all my fault.
Clarification
Therapy involves understanding that in most instances, you probably did not cause all of these events in your life.
Still, you are responsible for making your life better.
You can learn to be independent and interdependent.
You can use responsibility wisely to improve the quality of your thoughts, feelings, behavior, and life in general.
Myth/Misconception
I need to get the whole story out before I can get any help or any relief.
Clarification
Help starts with confirming and securing the safety of the client.
Help continues with learning how to self-regulate and stay in the present.
One’s story can be told in parts and pieces in the service of one’s goals with repetition to work through the story in the service of one’s becoming.
Progress can be made with skills that allow a person to reach goals.
Myth/Misconception
I can’t make it on your own.
Clarification
In the game of life, finding your freedom and liberation to live a life of value and purpose involves the capacity to be independent and interdependent.
This process involves wisdom, self-regulation and problem solving.
In an iterative process you can take control of your life and make good things happen accross many domains.
Myth/Misconception
I can’t harness my strengths.
Clarification
You may not feel your strengths in this moment.
There are positives in everyone.
There are positives in our past experience.
There is hope.
Access to strengths may start on a very small level.
Positive feedback loops can be built on small victories to create more chances for self-discovery and self-determination.
Myth/Misconception
My heart, mind, and soul are separate.
Clarification
Parts of your being may feel separate at times.
The separation may have been a protective mechanism for you at different times of your life.
Through self-regulation, you can learn to feel more mindfully integrated.
Myth/Misconception
I’m too messed up to change.
Clarification
We are learning beings.
We can understand the value of doing something different by learning how to change, the benefits of change, and the cost of keeping our behaviors, feelings, and thoughts the same.
We can recognize how the current moment is different from the past and how a new action would serve us in a better light.
Myth/Misconception
I bring no positives.
Clarification
People often have trouble describing strengths, interests, hobbies, preferences, hopes and dreams.
One job as a therapist is to recognize and elevate talent, which includes teaching people how to recognize and elevate their own talents.
Understanding desires, choices, and preferences can lead to enhanced self-regulation and goal attainment.
Myth/Misconception
I have nothing to add.
Clarification
Your experience, your knowledge, your skills, your abilities, your values, your hopes, and your dreams are important.
You might have been told otherwise repeatedly. You might have come to believe that a life of worth is not yours to gain.
Bringing you back to your essence, discovering and rediscovering what you treasure about yourself and your life adds to your agency and allows you to be more capable and more effective in therapy sessions and outside therapy sessions.
Myth/Misconception
I can’t learn new skills.
Clarification
Can’t is an absolute word.
It negates the possibility of actions that bring about change.
If you are open to experience and actively try, new skills can be learned in therapy and transferred to other parts of life.
You may need skills broken down into concrete examples, with ways to practice, and opportunities to discern how you put your unique stamp on the technique.
Learning skills can improve one’s sense of agency and one’s ability to expand the perception of options.
Clarifying Myths and Misconceptions of the Relationshp between Clients and Therapists
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Myth/Misconception
There’s only one star in therapy.
Clarification
Listen to you or listen to me? Not quite.
Therapists and clients bring a wealth of knowledge, skills, and abilities to the therapeutic relationship.
The relationship is co-constructed in the service of humanity and in the process of becoming.
Learning to share space and time can be very helpful and can transfer to the relationships of the rest of your life.
Myth/Misconception
One person in the therapy relationship has all the power.
Clarification
Therapy involves a relationship of partners working together in the service of common goals.
Both the therapist and the client bring enormous talents, values, and skills to the relationship.
The people and their capabilities are celebrated within the contexts of reaching these goals in the name of humanity.
Clarifying Myths and Misconceptions of
What Happens in Therapy
Myth/Misconception
Therapy is all about the struggle, the sadness, and the shame.
Clarification
Most of us come to therapy when a problem has occurred or a series of problems have occurred.
We may bring with us intense emotions, negative self-talk or unhelpful behaviors.
Each of these has a function or a reason for their comeabouts.
Understanding these parameters are helpful in the service of providing a context upon which goals can be developed and attained.
The journey towards these goals shifts the focus away from despair towards pragmatism.
Here are things I can do when I feel this way.
Here are things I can do when I think this way.
Here are methods of restoring hope that give me agency.
Myth/Misconception
Insight is Everything.
Clarification
Insight is important because it allows you to have awareness and clarity about what happened in the past, what is happening in the present, and what might happen for the future.
Still,insight is not enough. Self-regulation and problem solving is also needed.
Self-regulation involves learning how to regulate emotions and tolerate stress.
Problem solving involves reaching an objective goal and being effective interpersonally.
Wisdom combines insight, self-regulation, and problem solving.
Therapy involves helping people accumulate wisdom so that they can live effective, sustainable lives.
Myth/Misconception
Therapy is all about childhood.
Clarification
Most people come to therapy with a range of experiences that influence each other.
Childhood experiences along with others across the lifespan, are important.
Once personal narrative can be worked on and celebrated in the service of finding one’s values and in increasing motivation to make new positive experiences happen.
Myth/Misconception
Talking about problems is the single thing that makes the problems all go away.
Clarification
Discussions in therapy is not a one way street. A tool or skill needs to be created in therapy that gives you the capacity for improved self-determination (autonomy, competence, and relatedness).
Adding pragmatic plans for experience outside of sessions are hallmarks for transferring knowledge.
Myth/Misconception
Therapy happens only in the session.
Clarification
While many moments of growth can happen in a therapy session, sessions can also function as a coaches corner where you prepare for life outside of the session.
Since the hours outside of session are much greater than the hours in session, you deserve therapy that shifts the focus to your skillful techniques as you encounter all aspects of your life.
Clarifying Myths and Misconceptions of
Limitations in Therapy
Myth/Misconception
Therapy is theoretical.
Clarification
Conceptual, abstract and ideational therapies can lack the capacity for pragmatism.
The value of therapy lies in its utility.
You deserve to gain insight, self-regulation, and problem-solving skills to improve your functioning in personal, social, romantic, and professional realms.
Myth/Misconception
Therapy is never fun.
Clarification
By improving your knowledge, skills, and abilities in therapy you can feel a sense of enjoyment, relief, and hope.
Capacity building and honoring successes no matter how small can be fun!
Myth/Misconception
We don’t laugh in therapy.
Clarification
Therapy can be about exploring happiness, love, and joy.
Tissues are not only for sad tears.
Myth/Misconception
I’ll be in therapy forever.
Clarification
Therapy has a beginning, a middle and an end.
The goal is to work together with your therapist to gain a skill set for which you can make your life work.
As you improve your ability to use strategies and insights from therapy to reach your goals, your need for the therapy sessions can go down.
There will be a time to say goodbye.
The effects of the relationship and the work live on past the last therapy session.
Clarifying Myths and Misconceptions of
Progress in Therapy
Myth/Misconception
You can’t transfer learning to other parts of your life.
Clarification
Transfer knowledge is the highest form of learning.
One value of therapy is the capacity to recognize patterns and differences in situations. Mindfulness helps with that.
Consider it like a mathematical equation: a goal is to see how a problem has similarities to other problems that you have seen and how differences of a problem gives you the contextual understanding to know what to do.
The capacity to zoom in and out of problems provides for increased sustained effectiveness and growth across various aspects of life.
What to Look For In a Therapist?
Find a doctoral-level practitioner who has extensive training and experience with behavioral health therapy.
Find a doctoral-level practitioner who can connect your experience in therapy to tangible ways to improve multiple aspects of your life.
Find a doctoral-level practitioner who can meet you where you are at in this moment in your life.
Find a doctoral-level practitioner who can support you in several states around the country.
Find a doctoral-level practitioner who can help you gain the necessary skills to make your life better.
Find a doctoral-level practitioner who can help define your values, improve your strengths and raise abilities to overcome challenges.
Contact
Dr. Matthew Mandelbaum today for
a 20-minute
complimentary
phone consultation to get things started.
