CXXV: Therapeutic Intervention, Part One - The Need

Let’s Be Serious…
There is so much going on in this fast-paced life that we oftentimes don’t get to see the effects that certain events and encounters have on us over time until it’s too late. We also don’t get to see our destructive communication styles, our bad attachment issues/habits, or our inability to deal with all that comes with being alive.

This is why it it becoming more and more important for us to seek out help from a professional.

You don’t have to be going through a life crisis to seek the help of a therapist or counselor. You just have to acknowledge that life is difficult and a time will come where you’ll need a different perspective on things to help you through.

REACTION

As humans, we learn our adaptation skills as we grow up. While we’re younger, we learn from our parents who either coddle us when we fall or encourage us to get up and brush it off. When we grow older, we learn how to react to things through religion or through friendships and other relationships.

But, sometimes, we are unable to learn from life’s teachers. Sometimes we learn bad ways of dealing with things.

A therapist can help us to better gauge and understand why we react in the ways that we do. They can also help us to understand how to work with our reactionary styles, how to change them for the better, and how to use them to foster growth.

For example, we are currently experiencing the biggest and most “out of the blue” things that we’ve ever experienced and our global response was that of fear and panic. That fear and panic is now manifesting itself in destructive ways (like hoarding, stealing, and gluttony). Even in times like these, a therapist or a counselor can help us gauge and work with our reactions so that we can reach a new and better norm for handling scary situations.

ATTACHMENT

I am the first person to call out the destructive attachment issues that plenty of people exhibit (I’ve even had this attachment once or twice [or a bunch of times]). Now, it may seem corny or cliche to take the cause of these styles all the way back to everyone's childhood, but these start somewhere.

We grow up seeing love stories that last because movies are only 2-hours in length and not a lifetime, we see people plastering their “happy lives” on social media as if (1) we need to see every joy and (2) those joys come without failure. These are the things that we accept as normal, so when we experience something different we don’t know how to react. We hold onto what we have hoping to change it into something better because we are afraid to be without those strings.

But really, it is simply a fear of facing one’s self.

We latch onto whatever will allow us to latch because feeling someone else’s presence becomes better than just accepting and dealing with our own.

This style/habit is dangerous and it must be changed. But, we cannot make this change without first acknowledging that we have this problem.

COMMUNICATION

Whether this be with a loved one, a family member, a significant other, or a stranger, we are getting further and further away from effective communication.

We are forgetting that communicating is this two way street riddled with speed bumps titled “listen”, “think” and “respond”. This turns our conversations into one-sided, fruitless chatter.

Now, there are plenty of people who are okay with this style of talking but I, personally, am not. If I’m going to be stuck talking to someone (sorry, not sorry… I’m an introvert), then I at least want it to be somewhat of a meaningful conversation. This is not to say that ever conversation has to be deep and thought-provoking, it just means that we can’t start out a conversation about one thing and always end up talking about you. You’re not that interesting!

Therapy/counseling is the perfect place to have those full-blown conversations about yourself. Get it out. Set those thoughts free so that you can engage in actual conversation with friends and family without making everyone else’s story your own.

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Therapy has a way of shining a bright light on things within a person, whether it be good or bad, that is helpful to know. Therapy gives a never-ending stream of useful tools that can be used and called upon whenever necessary.

All of these tools don’t just come overnight, however. They are pulled out throughout ongoing work with your therapist. Therapy is only as successful as the therapeutic alliance is strong. This refers to the relationship between the therapist and the client which, when strong, allows the client to be more open and honest with the therapist about what is going on within their lives (no sense in going to therapy and lying completely, right? 🤣).

The main goal of this post is just to make clear the need for therapy. You don’t have to be in the midst of a crisis in order to reach out and receive helpful tools for the future.

Hopefully this post, and those to follow, opens the eyes of many readers looking to get more in tune with their wants, needs, and inner selves.