Am I Doing This Right?
During a recent conversation with a friend, I learned that she had just finished her first counseling appointment and she shared how strange it was to sit and talk about herself for nearly an entire hour. She expressed feeling worried that she wasn’t “doing it right.” So many aspects of our daily lives involve standardized, inflexible procedures that it seems only logical to want to grasp for some type of formula or blueprint to navigate this process as well. But therapy, while not completely devoid of parameters, necessitates creativity and improvisation.
The fifty-minute conversation with your therapist will invariably be different than other interactions you will have throughout the week with family members, co-workers, and friends, but this is precisely what is beneficial — having a designated space to exclusively reflect on and speak about life experiences, personal challenges, and observations. Studies have shown that simply talking about our problems and sharing our negative emotions with someone we trust can be profoundly healing—reducing stress, strengthening our immune system, and reducing physical and emotional distress (Pennebaker, Kiecolt-Glaser, & Glaser, 1988).
Giving language to ideas and thoughts that have previously gone unarticulated is one way that we can begin to understand our feelings and experiences with more depth. Individuals seek therapy for countless reasons and there are no right or wrong topics to discuss. If you are showing up and sharing honestly about your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, you are doing therapy right.