Why psychotherapy?

Why psychotherapy?

It's a big commitment.

Money, time and emotional labor.

Why the hard yards if you don't want to make anything out of them?

With the right therapist, you can feel confident in bringing out your most vulnerable parts and exploring the parts of yourself that may be hidden or repressed. With the aim of integration, psychotherapy allows us to discover and reintegrate these lost parts and become more complete ourselves.

Embracing the process of psychotherapy can be financially and emotionally challenging, but without full commitment, you can never do the hard work of changing your own life.

Having gone through the process myself, I can say that it was – and has been – life-changing.

It was a journey that was sometimes challenging, often irritating, sometimes frightening, often enlightening, always engaging and sometimes surprising – and most of all, to me – deeply creative.

It was the only space where I could fully and safely explore my inner worlds.

I had returned to Melbourne with my tail between my legs, having completed a fulfilling and well-paid role interstate. Luckily I had savings behind me. For a while I stayed on the treadmill applying for roles, being flown around Australia for interviews, only to find the position assigned to someone less qualified/better focused/more successful at raising research funding, or who had managed to hang around for a long time. enough to convince the hierarchy that they should be rewarded with a running appointment. It was humiliating and exhausting. Every position I applied for had at least 80 to 100 applicants. I was tired and full. Enough was enough.

I had always had an interest in helping young people. I had enjoyed mentoring students as part of my role at the university and slowly lit the flames of an interest in therapy and counselling.

I started getting counseling on my own and even though my counselor was great, we weren't getting anywhere. He agreed that it was time to move on and recommended that I see a therapist he had met during his ACT training. Sally (as we will call her) had just completed her registration and psychiatric training, was working psychodynamically (my preference) and had a practice nearby.

I had an image in my head of the perfect therapist for myself - someone warm and fuzzy like Judd Hirsch on Ordinary People, or perhaps a wise and witty German like the diminutive Septagenerian Dr. Fried in I never promised you a rose garden. I imagined someone spicy, perhaps slightly overweight, with thick eyebrows and gray hair, dispensing life advice and jokes from a swivel office chair. Definitely not a tall young blonde with a striking look and cool blue eyes.

I was probably surprised by her attractiveness, but I stayed and told my story while she listened intently and kept her assessments to herself.

And so my journey into psychotherapy began.

Those first few sessions were hard.

I didn't have therapy, but I described my pain and relived it in many of those early moments.

After this initial evaluation period, she indicated that there was something to work on (I've always wondered if this carefully worded sentence was part of her commitment to understatement - a trait I've come to value rather than dismiss) and that she and I could work on it together.

At first I was raw from the events of the recent past, but it wasn't long before we got to one of the many paths that led backwards into my childhood.

Psychotherapy was a mainstay of my emotional life. Somewhere where I felt safe and cared for. A place to explore and find myself. A place where all parts of me were welcome and warmly welcomed, but where I was also challenged and confronted. A relationship in which I was listened to and thoughtfully considered.

Sally has been there in my life for 10 years. Every Friday and for a while, including Wednesday, I would come into their rooms, punch in the code, and wait impatiently on the undersized waiting room chairs in the hallway. I felt like my life would be visible to everyone. try to avoid the eyes of other customers.

I will miss their rickety hat stand (a public liability suit waiting to happen), the comfy chair I lived in for 50 minutes (and sometimes, rarely, a Smidgeon more), and the psychiatric texts on their bookshelves. Among these weighty books, my eyes were always drawn to a battered copy of Marie Cardinal's red-hot and poetic memoir, The Words to Say It, which carved its own niche above the fireplace.

I will miss the smell and feel of the room, the lamps and paintings, the gauzy texture of the curtains that keep my vulnerability and tears out of public view. I notice that I don't say I'll miss her - maybe because it's too sad. Although we go into psychotherapy to find ourselves, we do so through a relationship, and our therapist becomes special to us, re-educating and honoring our most vulnerable and fragile parts through the dangerous journey of self-discovery.

It's hard to leave.

Sally knows that art is important to me. Without her I wouldn't have been able to come back to it. And of course, here I am, trying my wings as a therapist myself.

When I started therapy, I was all over the place. Now I feel stable and centered – able to find meaning and give back.

What has she done for me?

It's not for the metrics of randomized controlled trials. Another smooth and packaged certificate.

It might be something for dreams or poems, something to think about on those days when I'm grateful to be alive.

Alternative practitioner psychotherapy

The best place to find alternative practitioners psychotherapy is in our free alternative practitioner directory. To view all alternative psychotherapy practitioners, please click here.