Have you ever started therapy/healing with a new person and felt some big feelings and thoughts about it?
We’ve been chatting about this over on instagram, and these are The Big Two that come up for people:
The “I feel like too much!!!!!” experience
The “this is moving so slowly is anything even happening???” experience
Have you been here? Maybe as a client, maybe as a practitioner, maybe even in both roles?
Beginnings are tender. This much I know is true.
Maybe we feel like too much, like we’re too intense and we’re going to scare the therapist away. Maybe we don’t have enough of a container or trust built up (yet!) to put the things down. The Things we showed up to therapy in order to have some help holding.
Maybe it feels unbearably mindnumbingly slow. It doesn’t feel like any Real Work is happening. It’s glacial. It’s itchy and uncomfortable. It feels futile or frustrating or surface level.
Either way, underneath these two experiences (or whichever experience you’re having), there might be another feeling.
The sense that we’re doing something wrong.
We’re showing up wrong.
Our feelings are too big.
We’re too chatty.
We’re too quiet.
We’re going to burden our therapist by sharing our truth.
Today, I want to offer that maybe you’re not doing anything wrong.
What if The Thing that is happening, the experience you’re having, can offer you more information?
Does the information point to you needing more time, needing to pick up the pace, needing some patience and gentleness, or needing a different practitioner?
I can’t know that, but I can trust that the answer that feels true to you is The Right Answer For You.
And hopefully, your practitioner will trust that (trust YOU), too.
Just something to chew on today, if it feels helpful.
Because what a relief it can be when having room to grow and shift in a therapeutic relationship doesn’t mean we are Bad and Doing Everything Wrong.
And I don’t know about you, but lately I will take all of the relief and comfort I can alongside the hard work and growth I’m doing.
In care and in nerdiness (because intake forms + therapeutic relationships + trauma-informed language + somatic happenings are all I think about lately),
Jess
P.S. I’m sharing a lot about the beginning of a therapeutic relationship because I’m writing a lot about it for a new course that’s coming out! All about a trauma informed intake process. Beginning Magic opens next week — eeeee! If this material is landing somewhere deep in your bones and stirring your mind, stay tuned.