Think about what you want out of therapy. If you’re having to wait for therapy and you’re on a wait list, think about what you can be doing between booking your first session and actually starting.
What Changes Do You Want To Make?
Think about what you want to change or move towards in your life. What is the one thing that is going to help you do that when therapy gets hard?
Therapy isn’t always fun. It’s like ripping off the band-aid on a wound that is infected. We need to clean it up first and disinfect it before we can put a new band-aid on and take care of it in the way that it needs to be taken care of.
Therapy can be a challenging process. You’re going to need something to help you through this as you dig into the harder parts of understanding what happened to you, and why you are the way you are today.
What Do You Want To Move Towards?
A really helpful thing can be to think about what you are moving towards, rather than what you are moving away from. Less “I don’t want to be sad” and more “I want to be happy.”
A lot of what we are doing right now to cope with life is distraction, distraction, distraction. It might be binge watching Netflix, or watching a movie or show and fast-forwarding through it even. Think about what you are doing and when you do that thing, think about what you’re moving away from. Then think about the opposite – what you are moving towards?
What Do You Want To Be Different?
One more thing to think about is what would be different for you if we waved a magic wand. What’s the one thing that would change and make life so much more tolerable for you?
If you can think about these things as you wait between now and when your therapy starts, you’ll be in a really good place to get going right from day one.
