Overhead light in the house may have been off but the morning rays of light seeped through the blinds adorning the floor of Emily’s home office. Her accolades adorned the shelves as evidence of many years of successful marketing. However, as she sat before her computer and looked at the information scrolling across it a familiar feeling of dread grew in her chest. Crucially, it appeared that success was an empty triumph.
Her phone rang – another missed call from her partner. Another canceled dinner. Another promise broken.
Emily had always been a super achiever, if I may say so. In college she got top grades to top grades in her corporate ladder wider than anyone in her company. But inside, something was splitting open. The demands, the expectation, the drive, the obsession, the barriers that she had set for herself – they were falling.
After work one particular Tuesday evening she realized that something had to be done. For Emily, the first deep breath she ever got was while in her therapist’s office with a warm light and reassuring attitude. This she did not know, this would be the start of the great unknown, a journey of discovery, healing and living.
Here, in chronology, is her narrative – and proof positive of the power of therapy to open doors, mend hearts, and reveal possibilities that can be missed in the dark.
1. Therapy can aid in self-awareness:
Often, inside a person, there may be levels that they do not realize exist, which may produce an infinite number of occurrences in the life of an individual: Besides explaining people’s repressed memories from their subconscious mind, therapy explains helpful strategies. Curtailing the gap between the actual and the desired self makes the person more conscious of him or herself and perhaps removes internal conflict in one’s life.
The first goal for Emily when she joined therapy was self-awareness. By the help of the therapy sessions the girl learnt that her perfectionism stemmed from always having to fight for herself during her childhood. Such understanding was an eye-opener that changed her perceptions, as it helped her find out that she does not need to work hard at the workplace in order to be considered relevant or valuable.
2. Therapy can help you learn life-long coping skills:
Okay, let me guess, but what does coping skills mean in the first place? This means any thing that allows you to make it through bad phases in your life such as losing a bond, not being promoted to the position you rightly deserved, or even worrying about a driving test, is what is referred to as coping skill. The main idea here is that therapists all through their training and education are endowed with the responsibility of enhancing the inherent strength within the human being. And since no individual is similar to the other, strategies of coping will not differ greatly from one to the other. For instance, journaling is helpful in managing stress because I am a writer. Different calming techniques may be aromatherapy and bubble baths to another. While it makes sense that everyone is different, this also means there isn’t an effective way to deal with it for everybody.
Subsequently, Emily undergoes targeted skills for helping in managing her life. The woman was told by her therapist to go for exercises that she might like, such as yoga and journaling to help deal with anxiety. They armed Emily with ways through which she could handle stress resulting from activities in her everyday life.
3. Therapy has the power to positively alter the way you engage with the people in your life:
Besides providing you with the means to widen your self-insight and strengthen your love for yourself, therapy will also enable you to ground and maintain the positive relationships with your close ones. It makes it possible to be honest and reliable and makes the quality of relations higher.
Another of Emily’s major interests was relationships. She had a habit of countering whenever she was under pressure, to her partner and other friends. This was not possible because Therapy enabled her to note the said patterns and learn how to communicate her needs. Instead, her relationships became better established and her relationships became more satisfying.
4. Therapy can make you feel happier:
Certainly one way that therapy could help is that in having the chance to be purposefully deliberate about these things, the direction and meaning one chooses for their own life might be happier. Gottlieb recalled such concepts as life satisfaction when he said, “And I don’t think we have a lot of space to talk about that.”
Further as she worked through these specific areas Emily discovered that she was doggedly becoming a happier person. Therapy helped her safe environment to think about what she actually wants concerning her life. No longer burdened by past pressures or guilt, Emily began to focus on what made her feel alive: visiting relatives, going on vacation, joining a worthy cause like volunteering and launching a book club among others.
5. Therapy can help to improve the quality of life:
It was found to reduce fear of the future, take away the agony of the former dreadful memories and might assist the person to refocus and live in the present. Physical wellness is an indication of enhanced health fitness since feeling well is associated with good health.
Last but not the least; the overall quality of Emily’s life was enable to alter dramatically. With the anxiety lifted and old wounds, she was able to live more in the present tense. As bland as it sounds, even getting a cup of coffee or Taking a walk with her beloved dog, brought joy.
Psychotherapy is a process – Personal development process which can significantly affect one’s perception of oneself, skills to manage the everyday stress, interact with others and experience personal satisfaction. As with the story of Emily, one can dramatically change his or her life and start not only to survive but to live well, if he has improved the understanding of himself.
