Ever felt frustrated when you vent to a friend with the intention to just be heard and they go ahead and give you some “advice”? Ever been to a therapist with the hope for a “solution” but they throw the ball back in your court?
That’s the thing about therapy. One of the foundation pillars of therapy is the idea that the process facilitates your processing of information and life and provides you with a space to “figure it out” as you go.
Look at it this way, an advice offers you a one time pre-packed store-bought solution that may definitely help, but leaves you with little idea of how to make it happen again. Therapy, on the other hand, offers you a place to brainstorm and practice your problem solving skills so that you can DIY your own solutions at any point in life.
If you think about it then, giving advice as a therapist in a therapeutic setting pretty much goes against the very purpose and ethics of therapy. The goal of therapy, in a larger sense, is to help you figure out what you can do to help yourself and what kind of skills you may need to be able to do that in any situation.
But that begs the question, if a therapy session is not about giving advice or solutions, what is it even about?
Well, here are a few things you can expect from a therapy session that can help you towards “solutions” or answers to your problems:
- A judgement free and validating space that can help you really open up about all the aspects and layers of the concern and your experience with it to help you understand your reality in its most authentic form.
- Questions and prompts that can help you make sense and meaning of the situation that can then help you make a meaningful and mindful choice or decision.
- Perspectives driven by research and concepts and not just personal opinions that can help you with newer point of views to the context and the possible answers.
- A deeper dive into your thoughts, feelings and behaviours that can help you understand the underlying patterns. This can then help you really work on the concern at its root and not just keep snipping the buds tirelessly.
- Tools and techniques that can become the bridge to figuring out the longstanding solutions and answers so that you can work through things even during moments when this space or any other support is not immediately accessible.
Contrary to popular beliefs, therapy inherently works towards self-reliance and building on your resources and capacities in a way that helps you trust yourself, make space for the uncomfortable emotions and find your way out of difficult experiences at your own pace.
