Quotes About Therapy

once heard creativity described as being the ability to grasp the essence of one thing and the essence of some very different thing and smash them together to create some entirely new thing. That's what therapists do too.

What makes therapy challenging is that it requires people to see themselves in ways they normally choose not to. A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, but it's up to the patient to take a good look at that reflection

Years later, when I've done thousands of first sessions, and information-gathering has become second nature, I'll use a different barometer to judge how it went: Did the patient feel understood? It always amazes me that someone can walk into a room as a stranger and then, after fifty minutes, leave feeling understood, but it happens nearly every time. When it doesn't, the patient doesn't return. And because Michelle did, something had gone right.

The therapy room seemed to be one of the only places left where two people sit in a room together for an uninterrupted fifty minutes. Despite its veil of professionalism, this weekly I-thou ritual is often one of the most human encounters that people experience.

the qualities she said she wanted in a partner, she came to therapy and reported: "It's too bad, but there just wasn't any chemistry." To her unconscious, his emotional stability felt too foreign.

It's well documented that touch is important for well-being throughout our lifetimes. Touch can lower blood pressure and stress levels, boost moods and immune systems.

A therapist will hold up a mirror to patients, but patients will also hold up a mirror to their therapists.

Talking can keep people in their heads and safely away from their emotions.

Implicit in the therapeutic contract is the patient's willingness to tolerate discomfort, because some discomfort is unavoidable for the process to be effective.

It's Wendell's job to help me edit my story. All therapists do this: What material is extraneous? Are the supporting characters important or a distraction? Is the story advancing or is the protagonist going in circles? Do the plot points reveal a theme?

Sometimes a therapist will deliberately "prescribe the problem" or symptom that the patient wants to resolve. A young man who keeps putting off finding a job might be told in therapy that he can't look for a job; a woman who won't initiate sex with her partner might be told not to initiate it for a month. This strategy, in which the therapist instructs patients not to do what they're already not doing, is called a paradoxical intervention

I once told Wendell that I'm a terrible decision maker, that often what I think I want doesn't turn out the way I'd imagined. But there were two notable exceptions, and both proved to be the best decisions of my life. In each case, I was nearly forty. One was my decision to have a baby. The other was my decision to become a therapist.

Sitting-with-you-in-your-pain is one of the rare experiences that people get in the protected space of a therapy room, but it's very hard to give or get outside of it—even for Jen, who is a therapist.

But those underreported numbers are still high. In any given year, some thirty million American adults are sitting on clinicians' couches, and the United States isn't even the world leader in therapy. (Fun fact: the countries with the most therapists per capita are, in descending order, Argentina, Austria, Australia, France, Canada, Switzerland, Iceland, and the United States.)

We grow in connection with others. Everyone needs to hear that other person's voice saying, I believe in you. I can see possibilities that you might not see quite yet. I imagine that something different can happen, in some form or another. In therapy we say, Let's edit your story.

It may seem counterintuitive, but therapy works best when people start getting better—when they feel less depressed or anxious, or the crisis has passed. Now they're less reactive, more present, more able to engage in the work. Unfortunately, sometimes people leave just as their symptoms lift, not realizing (or perhaps knowing all too well) that the work is just beginning and that staying will require them to work even harder.

Most things worth doing are difficult," he replied. He said this not in a glib way but in a tone and with an expression that made me think he spoke from personal experience. He added that while everyone wants to leave each session feeling better, I, of all people, should know that that's not always how therapy works. If I wanted to feel good in the short term, he said, I could eat a piece of cake or have an orgasm. But he wasn't in the short-term-gratification business.

Delta Force Operator Captain Brian "Hutch" Hutchinson hated group therapy almost as much as he hated the mind-warping meds.

Clients with painful experiences and frightening symptoms are accustomed to living in a world where others avoid and reject them. Our ability to remain empathically connected to them through the expression of their suffering sets the stage for therapy to be a qualitatively different relationship experience–one where they are accepted, pain and all.

Words of comfort, skillfully administered, are the oldest therapy known to man.

The middle finger has to do with sex and with anger. When you are angry, hold your middle finger and watch the anger dissolve. Hold

We often assume things about others to justify our resistance. We make statements such as: It wouldn't do any good anyway. My husband/wife won't understand. I would have to change my whole personality. Only crazy people go to therapists. They couldn't help me with my problem. They couldn't handle my anger. My case is different. I don't want to bother them. It will work itself out. Nobody else does it.

Sounds like being a therapist. People normally came into my office because something happened. Someone had died, or betrayed them. Their love wasn't reciprocated. They'd lost a job. Gotten divorced. Something big. But the truth was, while that might've been the catalyst, the problem was almost always tiny and old and hidden.

A therapist has to have clear boundaries, even with former clients. People already get into our heads—if they also get into our lives, there's a problem.