Psychotherapy Gave Me Hope

Mind

Aug 25, 2020

Outing Therapy

experienceoftherapy

Blogger Outing Therapy shares her experience of therapy, and the three main ways seeing a therapist has helped her live a more hopeful life
You can read more experiences of therapy here
And if you are interested in starting your own therapy journey, start here

Prior to seeing a psychotherapist, I felt unhappy, confused, restricted and hopeless. This is because I was...

making mistakes and errors of judgement in my working life
fearful of relationships and of approaching others
referring to the past, wishing I had said and done things differently
struggling to express what I was thinking and feeling
deeply concerned about what other people thought about me
second-guessing myself
lacking trust in my abilities, thoughts, feelings and ideas
comparing and making judgements about myself and others
believing I wasn't worthy and was different from others

These made me feel everything I wanted for my life, such as a successful career and relationship was out of reach.

Seeing a psychotherapist, however, gave me hope what I wanted for my life wasn't so out of reach.

1. Going to therapy freed my mind

At the time of experiencing the thoughts and feelings I describe above, I thought nothing more of them. I thought they were just 'who I was'.

However, session after session, I realised this wasn't the case.

I realised they were, in fact, not me, but my thoughts and feelings - and they had been stopping me from getting what I wanted in my life.

Psychotherapy supported me in realising this as each session gave me:

a better understanding of what I was thinking and feeling
reassurance and comfort what I was thinking and feeling wasn't 'stupid' (as I first thought); and
advice and guidance on how else to perceive and approach situations

Each of these, in turn, freed my mind and body from the constraints I was placing them under as I began to see myself differently. This then enabled me to make different decisions to the ones I had been making.

2. Seeing a therapist freed my body from fear

Secondly, psychotherapy gave me hope through bringing in emotional freedom techniques and Matrix Reimprinting techniques.

Emotional freedom technique (EFT), also known as tapping, supports you in relieving difficult and stressful emotions. It therefore helps to release tension in one’s mind and body.

Martrix Reimprinting technique, on the other hand, aims to change one’s perception of past traumatic events. For example, through visualisation, traumatic memories can be re-scripted and rewritten. These techniques gave me hope; after only one session my past memories had less of an impact on me and my present. This helped me feel less fearful and gave me the confidence to initiate conversations with others and attend social gatherings, which I would have previously avoided.

3. Psychotherapy introduced me to different ways of thinking

Lastly, psychotherapy gave me hope by introducing me to the work of neuroscientist Dr. Joe Dispenza.

In particular, Dr Joe Dispenza’s work supported me in believing it was possible to create change in my life through imagining I already had what I wanted in my life and combining it with an elevated emotion, such as gratitude. This includes meditating on what I want frequently, envisioning it in detail, asking myself what it would feel like to have the very thing I want and going throughout the day in that state of being.

It was also recommended to me to write down the above in detail, which I have found easier to commit to.

In summary, by freeing my mind from constraining thoughts, fears and worries; my body from intense feelings of fear and implementing the tools from Dr Joe Dispenza’s work, I gained hope of creating a better future. I also gained the confidence to start a blog sharing my experience of therapy, which I would never have had the idea for, nor would have acted on, did I not have the support of a psychotherapist.

Outing Therapy is a blogger who writes about the benefits of psychotherapy