Therapy

I’ve been in therapy before. It was a slightly confusing experience for me and I’m not quite sure my first therapist helped me so much. I mean, she was good and I did feel somewhat better, but it didn’t necessarily feel like my ideal therapeutic alliance. I think I need a different approach.

I’ve been thinking about going back to therapy for a couple of days now. There’s some things I want to sort out: my inferiority complex, self-confidence issues and a couple of other things. Funnily enough, my motivation this time around isn’t to rid myself of some utterly debilitating neurosis but it’s just to gain a better perspective, for self-improvement, one could say.

I feel okay, most of the time. I feel good, even. But I can be a better version of myself, I know. And I also know that I’m the only one who’s in the way of me being that better version.

As a Psychology student, you’d expect that I advocate therapy to everyone, which I do. But I strongly believe that there’s a difference in needing therapy to deal with maladjustments and wanting it for self-improvement. And I believe this because of my own past experiences and because of what I’ve seen a couple of friends undergo. Before, my motivations were quite different. I was in a very different, very negative space and so I needed therapy. But today, not so much. I feel content most times, I just want a support system that I won’t get dependent on, the way I tend to with people in my life.

I just want to be a more well-rounded and well-adjusted person in general. I know that I’ve got a couple of things that hold me back, ever since I can remember and those are things that need dealing with. No, not fixing, because I don’t necessarily think that I’m broken in any way, but just dealing with. This includes things like my envy and sudden motivation to be better than others when I realise they’re doing something I’m not. It also includes me investing a considerable amount of time beating myself up over how ‘unproductive’ I am, while I’m simultaneously exhausted from the amount of work I put in that day (not that it’s an enormous amount, most times but that’s the point! Why am I beating myself up?)

So that’s that. I want therapy. But I’m still struggling with the prospect of talking to my mum about it because I know she’ll worry my anxieties from before are back (which, they’re not). Yet, I don’t want to get into anything without her knowing about it. But we’ll see.