The Viable Alternative

Among honouring yourself and consistently stepping out of your comfort zone, one of the cornerstones of developing a high self esteem is becoming aware of your self defeating thoughts, habits, patterns, behaviours and emotions (I explain more about this in a blog I wrote several years back titled, “3 Ways to Improve Your Self Esteem and Take Back Your Power“). Not being aware of them is like being in a boat unaware that there’s a hole in it and wondering why no matter how hard you row you have to struggle to stay afloat.

It’s also like being the CEO of a company where you’re unaware that your “trusted” accountant is siphoning off your revenue and you’re left wondering at the end of each quarter what’s eating up your profits.

Two effective tools for becoming self aware are journaling and meditating. A third is some type of psychoanalytic therapy.

People often vilify therapy because they either think it’s only for the weak, the crazy, or those with “tons” of issues.

I beg to differ.

EVERYONE on this planet has issues of some sort or another, this includes ways we block our peace of mind, our success, our happiness and undermine our self esteem. We don’t realize we have issues until we realize we have issues, and to realize we have issues often takes a second set of trained and unbiased eyes to observe us because we’re often too enmeshed in our issues and too biased to see them for what they are.

However, like going to the gym, realizing you need therapy is only HALF the battle, making proper use of it so you can get the optimized benefits is the other half.

As a person who’s been undergoing therapy for almost a year and has started seeing improvement, I’m offering you some tips on how to get the best use of therapy so you can heal, and become a more whole, confident person with a high level of self esteem.

1) Listen to What the Damn Therapist Has to Say

Yea, I know you think you have it all figured out…oh but wait, you’re in therapy, so maybe you don’t.

I also get that nobody knows you better than you, so no one has a right to tell you about yourself.

I’m not saying that your therapist is God, but there’s a reason why a competent therapist of any kind gets paid for what they do, because they’re PROFESSIONALS. They’re trained in helping people like you see themselves and helping them sort out their issues so that YOU the client can learn to get out of your own way.

There’s also a reason why you felt the need to hire a therapist. You’ve seen that the way you’ve been doing things hasn’t been working for you, so maybe, just maybe, if you stop arguing and shut up and listen to your therapist, you can get a fresh perspective and insight on how to change the course of your life from someone who’s trained to do exactly that.

2) Take Responsibility for Your Healing

Okay, so you do get props for taking the first step of personal responsibility over your issues by starting to see a therapist, but do not, DO NOT stop there.

It’s not your therapist’s job to heal you. Rather it’s his (or her) job to show you to yourself and give you the proper tools so that you, uhh…yes, YOU can do the actual work to heal thyself.

In order for you to heal thyself, you have to take a PROACTIVE role in your healing.

Whatever insight you get from your therapist in the office, you’re to take it out in the world and use it in your own life. In the same token, whatever tools you’re given by the therapist to deal with your issues are meant for you to actually apply in your own life so that you can eventually overcome these issues.

In turn, with the increasing self awareness you gain, you’re to take note of things and issues that come up for you and bring them up to your therapist in your next session so you can continue to grow and evolve.

I actually have a journal where I write down issues that come to the surface in between my sessions so that I can remember to bring them up to my therapist and deal with them. To me, staying the way I was is not an option, but it’s MY responsibility to fix it.

3) Grow Up and Stop Being a Wuss

Many people walk into the office therapist’s office and want their therapist to prescribe to them some pill so that all those uncomfortable feelings can go away and they can be on their “merry old way.” God forbid they actually dig deep so they can confront the issues that’s making them feel bad and that they’re trying to numb through alcohol, drugs, toxic relationships, eating, and now prescription meds.

Other times, people stop coming to therapy when the therapist shares a brutally honest truth about them that they need to hear that causes them to get all butthurt or shakes their reality so much that they opt out of coming anymore in order not to have to deal with the truth.

If this sounds like you, can you please grow the hell up and stop being such a wussy? (I wanted to say the other word that rhymes with “wussy,” but eh….I’ll keep it PG).

Healing is not for the faint of heart, so man or woman up and deal with it. In order to heal you’re going to have to face some harsh, often hidden truths about yourself, your past, and the people you know. You’re going to have to confront uncomfortable feelings and memories. Emotions are going to come up that you didn’t know you had. Your reality is going to be flipped up, turned upside down and shaken apart.

Sound hard? Well how hard has it been to live the life you’ve been living up to now?

Change isn’t easy or sexy, but in the end, it’s all worth it.

4) For Goodness Sake…SHARE!

Your therapist is trained to be insightful, pick up on subtle clues you’re sending to get to a deeper issue, and smell the b.s., but like I said, he/she is not God nor is he a clairvoyant (well, okay, there are some counselors our there who claim to be psychic, but that’s a WHOLE other discussion for another time) so he can’t help you work through an issue if you don’t bring it up to him.

I know someone who’s been through years of therapy, which undoubtedly helped her be the self aware emotionally mature woman she is today, but she had gone through a major childhood trauma that she never really addressed in all those years of her therapy, and as a result, the trauma still affected her negatively.

It’s okay to not feel ready to talk about certain issues in your life that carry a very large emotional charge. I mean, there are issues in my life that I’ve not really discussed with my therapist because I don’t yet feel comfortable. Such issues you may want to ease into talking about slowly rather than just throw yourself in headlong.

Just know this, the 400 lb gorilla in your life won’t magically resolve itself. You have to first be willing to share it with your therapist for you to start the process of overcoming it.

5) Be patient

So, when I started my therapy, I wasn’t the idiot who sat down and immediately demanded that my therapist give me a pill to make it all go away.

No way, perish the thought!

Instead I was that idiot that wanted to lay out my issues, and have the therapist immediately give me several life changing insights that would make the clouds part and give way to a beam of light from heaven that would shine on me and immediately transform me to an enlightened being who was now able to go out into the world and live a wonderful, prosperous, happy life.

My therapist sensed this and shared with me that therapy is a continuous and gradual unraveling of issues and hidden emotions that eventually lead to the root of the problem.

I didn’t want to hear all that. All I could think was, “Yea, yea, yea….just give me some insight so I can be on my way to go fix myself and become super successful.”

The truth is, my therapist was right, just like Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither is our path to wholeness.

Many of our self-defeating habits are deeply ingrained in us from childhood and are often entwined with buried emotions and memories, so your undoing of these of habits is going to involve the peeling off of layers like an onion, and that definitely isn’t going to happen in one session.

Shoot, I didn’t start seeing tangible results in the way I felt until nine months into my therapy, and those were from the cumulative results of all the other sessions I had been to.

So, don’t worry about the results, just be patient and do the work, and the results will surely come!

This is The Viable Alternative.

I hope this helps,

Ike Love