Why I wish everyone I love would try therapy

I have a confession to make.

If you’re a person in my life who I love I’m pretty sure at some point I’ve wished you would try therapy.

Before we go any further, I know how expensive therapy is. Also, I am not a therapist. But I also believe therapy can come in all different shapes and sizes, more on that later.  

It was my husband who suggested I go to therapy.

My dad had died more than a year before and I was navigating a world without him. My grief was complicated, heavy and raw but that was grief, wasn’t it? My dad had suffered a treatment-resistant depression for twelve years before his death and it had been almost unbearable watching this magical man slowly slip away. I’d spent a decade behind closed doors of hospitals with psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and nurses trying to find the answer. We never did find the answer for my dad, but I did learn lot about mental health.

So, when my husband suggested I should try therapy myself, I didn’t say what I really thought:

Why do I need therapy? I’ve just spent ten years with psychologists – I know the do’s and the don’ts.

But my husband rarely/never tells me what to do. His gentle suggestion was enough to show me he was worried. Okay, I agreed (not that I’ll learn anything, I sighed internally). The truth was I was an exhausted working mum – the idea of sitting for an hour for a few weeks talking about me, well, appealed.  

Four years later I emerged from the therapy.

 Looking back, the only way I can describe it is I’d become completely and utterly lost.

If we are on a path navigating the twists and turns of the big forest called Life, I’d reached a point where I really couldn’t see the wood for the trees. I didn’t know where I finished or where someone else began. I’d become so enmeshed and entangled - I didn’t know who I was any more. I’d forgotten to listen to me.

It wasn’t that I’d lost a love for life, I loved my family, my friends and my work even more in the way that grief can jolt you into remembering nothing lasts forever. I’d just somehow lost me along the way. My knowing, my instincts, my beliefs, my likes, my dislikes – my path had become covered by everything else.

Don’t get me wrong, therapy is not the fix-all solution. There are good therapists, bad therapists, therapists who are right for others but not right for you. I’ve had a therapist doze off in session (really, was I that boring?), I’ve questioned others with their ethics, but what they all did was shine a light on my patterns.  

Change, I’ve discovered, only ever comes from changed behaviour and actions. And it’s our behaviour patterns (and denial about them) which keep us stuck. It’s easy to feel helpless and resigned – it’s them not me, it’s just me, I am who I am, it’s just how it is.

 Only it’s not.

As we navigate that big, thick forest it helps to have the odd expert along the way. In her book Codependent No More, Melody Beattie describes therapy like a cruise ship.

“Picture ourselves standing on the shore. Way across the ocean is the island called Serenity where peace, happiness and freedom exist. We have two choices. The ocean liner called therapy. But next to it is a group of odd-looking people who appear to be rowing and look happy but we can’t see the oars. The problem is the ocean liner only goes so far. The only way we can get to the island is on the invisible boat.”

For me now, I suspect I’m on the invisible boat. I’m happy to be one of the funny looking people navigating my way.  My path is clearer again, the light has come back. I’m trusting myself and listening to me – for the first time in a really long time. I’ve started to hear my voice.  (The strangest part is the more I listen to me, the more I’m able to open my eyes and see the love and help that’s around me, that’s been there all the long.)

But I wouldn’t have gotten to this point without the cruise ship and I’ll happily hop back on again. However, if my goal is to clear my path and hear me again – I feel I need to walk this part alone, I want to get to know my voice again.  

But books? I love books. And podcasts too. While we can moan and moan that life’s never been so hard, I strongly disagree. I believe we’re all blessed to live in this era where the world’s best experts, scientists, researchers and doctors share their work, often for free. Some of my biggest breakthrough moments have been while jogging alone, ironically on a path, listening to an expert share their findings in a book.   

If I could have one wish, I wish my dad lived in this world. He would hear the incredible sportsmen, businessmen, experts and leaders talk openly about their ups and downs on the path. We never found his answer behind the closed doors in hospitals, but I suspect he would have found it somewhere here.

But this too is what I’ve learned.

The danger of wishing something is different to how it is. This resistance leads to the horrid feeling of helplessness and despair which makes the path feel heavy and blocked again. Acceptance holds the key.   

As a television journalist, I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of those brilliant leaders and Olympians. The more brilliant they are, the less they claim they know. They have coaches and people on their paths helping them clear the way. They do what they must to keep their paths bright, golden and at their very best. 

This approach has taken them to great places, to the versions of themselves they’ve always hoped they could be and it’s wonderful to see. But none of them would claim, I’m sure, they could have done it all alone.

So, if you’re a person in my life I love, I really wish you’d try therapy – not because I think there’s anything wrong with you. But because I believe you deserve the very best.

The books that have really helped me include:

• No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz

• Codependent No More Melody Beattie

• It’s Not You Dr Ramani Durvasula

• You are a Badass by Jen Sincero

• The Body Keeps a Score by Bessel van der Kolk

• Anything by Brené Brown

• The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (and his 10 conversations with Oprah Winfrey on her podcast to discuss this)

• Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? Dr Julie Smith

The podcasts that have really help me are:

• Feel Better, Live More - Dr Rangan Chatterjee

• The Mel Robbins Podcast

• On Purpose by Jay Shetty

• The School of Greatness by Lewis Howes

• Therapy Works by Julia Samuel

• Conversations of Inspiration by Holly Tucker

• Any interview with Dr Gabor Maté - an addiction specialist

• Any interview with Pete Crone - The Mind Architect