Hey, guys! Welcome to another episode of Fi-days.
Today's topic is "Therapy" and why I think it is so great.
And no, this is not an advertisement.
I want to talk about this topic not just because I'm passionate about it,
but in the hopes that it might encourage you to reconsider
your own opinion of therapy or perhaps encourage you
to take the leap and go to therapy yourself.
I, personally, have been going to therapy for two years now
and it has been an absolute game changer.
I feel like before I went to therapy two years ago,
there were all of these blind spots caused by things that I was subconsciously avoiding
that were getting in the way of my day-to-day ability to live a full life,
and I wasn't even aware of it.
So it's like prior to therapy my world was in black and white,
but that was the only way that I knew how to view the world
and I didn't know that there was another way.
After my therapist and I slowly drew attention to those areas,
those blind spots, it felt like the color slowly started to seep through
and I started to finally be able to see life, myself and relationships
much more clearly and more closely in line with actual truth.
This is because there are so many little micro wounds
that have built up over our life experiences and relationships,
- because we're human - that affect our day-to-day living
because we are body, mind and soul, they are all connected;
there's integration between them and you cannot separate them
no matter how hard you try.
This is where I plugged, maybe my favorite therapy book,
"The Body Keeps the Score".
You, guys, have seen this subtly make its way into my videos before.
This book goes into all that. High recommend from me.
I'm not trying to sugarcoat it.
The work of going to therapy can be super grueling and painful
especially when you start to hit those gold nuggets that are life-changing,
but can really challenge you because they require you to acknowledge
a truth about yourself that you weren't aware of
or to revisit a challenging moment from your past
or an epiphany that turns your world upside down,
because it makes you realize some subconscious pattern
that you have that's been hurting yourself and others.
Those moments are literally life-changing,
and if they make you want to give up on therapy and self-work and mindfulness,
then that's a sign that you're human.
But fighting through those things with someone who believes in you
- which your therapist should - is absolutely worth it
when you finally hit that moment where you start to feel a difference.
I cannot emphasize enough the internally transformative power of good therapy;
in that it strips away all of those lies that are getting in the way of our ability
to make actual free decisions with our full intellect, will and emotions
- all completely aligned -
and being able to do THAT is true freedom.
In my humble opinion.
One reason I love therapy so much is that, at the very least,
it provides a judgment-free zone for you to disclose and offload to someone
in a completely confidential and safe space.
Of course, it's totally normal to feel reserved
when you see your therapist for the first time.
You're human. Takes a while to build trust.
But as you build the trust, knowing that you have the space
into which you can bring those burdens or just really anything,
is immensely healing and powerful.
I remember I was terrified for my first session with my therapist.
Didn't know what to expect. Didn't know what I was going to talk about.
But when I left an hour and a half later, I felt incredibly light
because I had been so real in the session even though I did still have walls.
When you're in that space and you have someone
so authentically there to help you and hear you,
you can't help but be real with them in some way.
And not only was I real, but she completely validated everything that I had shared.
And let me tell you, the power of being incredibly real with someone,
and having them validate that and validate you, is immeasurable.
And then, with multiple sessions of that, you start to believe that the real you,
the authentic you, is the best you - which it is, by the way;
and that being real with someone doesn't have to be as scary as you thought.
Check out this video on vulnerability
if you'd like to hear me talk more about that.
I should note here that it's not very realistic
to expect that you're going to have a transformative experience
in your first few sessions of therapy; that's not likely to happen.
Even for me - who I would consider myself a very open person,
so my therapist didn't even have to try that hard to get me to talk for hours.
Even clinical psychologists need time to get to know you
and for that trust to authentically build.
For me, personally, it was only on the fifth session
that I had my first earth-shattering epiphany about myself.
So therapy is a long-term investment,
although you obviously can have shorter time with your therapist
if there's one particular issue that you want to unpack
rather than your entire life experiences and who you are as a person
and your sense of identity and your self-esteem
and walking through slowly all the different chapters of your life.
Even though it is a long-term investment, as someone who has done it for a long time,
I'm a huge advocate of it, and it is totally worth it - in my opinion.
Another reason that I like specifically talking therapy
is that psychologists are specifically trained
to pay attention to the particular language that you're using when you speak
to look out for signs that indicate something deeper is going on.
I've had a number of key moments in therapy where I'll just be telling a story,
and then after I'm done, my therapist will say something like:
"I noticed that you used this very particular word
or particular phrase when describing yourself.
Why is it that you phrased it that way?" or "I noticed that you apologize a lot.
What is it that makes you feel you have to do that?"
or "I notice that you use slightly self-deprecating language in that story"
or "I noticed that you made a lot of excuses for yourself in that story".
There are so many little hints in the language that we use
when we talk about things that are indicative
of where our self-esteem levels are at, what our subconscious fears are
or our opinions of others around us; and a lot of the time they're just
so completely subconscious that we don't even know they're there.
So having someone who is trained to pick up on those things is really valuable
because they make you think of a layer of your psyche
that you would never have had a reason to think about before.
And the great thing about a good therapist
is that they won't tell you explicitly about your problems,
but they'll ask pointed questions to help you come to the realizations for yourself.
I love this because this is what makes them more of a guide
who's leading you in the correct direction
rather than someone who's judging you and telling you what's wrong with you;
which I think a lot of people think therapy is,
but a good therapist isn't going to be doing that.
This is awesome, because not only does it help you to not feel judged by the therapist,
but it increases your own self-respect because it feels like you are the one
who's doing the work - and it is you who's doing the work - with the help
of a guide who is trained professionally to steer you in the right direction.
That's what good therapy is.
Good therapy provides you with so many different techniques
that you can take away and apply and practice in the real world;
and those techniques are often tailored to your specific ways of coping,
your specific ways of thinking and your specific strengths and weaknesses.
So it's like a customized guide for you particularly
that's built up over a period of time and a number of sessions;
and each time you use that guide, you prove to yourself
that YOU are capable of doing the work to rewire your own neural pathways
to overcome your subconscious habits and to, ultimately, heal.
And this is extremely powerful in building up your self-respect.
And in my humble opinion, self-respect and self-mastery are the real keys
to happiness in this lifetime.
Disagree? Let's discuss in the comments.
I know therapy can be scary.
Maybe you've been wanting to go for a long time,
but you can't quite muster up the courage to do so.
That's normal. You're human. I'm human. We're all human.
But I want to testify that the last two years of therapy for me
have been just incredibly, immeasurably, indescribably transformative
since I've been working together with my therapist
to break down some of my walls, and that's a life worth living.
I kind of wish I started therapy earlier, but probably wouldn't have been open
to being as honest with myself as I've been required to be.
Don't get me wrong. That's not to say that I'm completely healed.
In fact, I don't actually think that it's possible for any of us
to be 100% healed at any point in this lifetime.
There's so many little different daily things
that make us upset or give us wounds, which we then have to process and heal from;
that's never going to stop.
But therapy provides you with the tools to cope with those things
in a way that isn't going to be crippling to your life
and your self-esteem and your self-worth and how you treat other people.
So even though I'm not completely healed, I am at least at a point
where facing my demons doesn't scare me anymore
because I've proven to myself that I can do it.
And now I truly believe that the way in which I view myself
and the world and relationships is more in line with truth.
And I'm so much more detached from my wounds
because I've processed them and I've archived them in the right way
so that they're not scary anymore.
And having done that, I can now talk about those things more freely.
In fact, one of the biggest fruits that's come out of therapy for me
is that I don't even consider my wounds as a defining aspect of myself anymore.
That's not to say that I don't still have them,
but that's to say that going to therapy
has built up my inherent sense of self-worth so much
that I know now that I'm much more than my wounds
or my past or my weaknesses or my vices
or the mistakes that I made because I'm human.
I know that because through the grueling process of therapy
and mindfulness and introspection for two years,
I've stripped away the veil in front of me and I now see who I truly am;
and she's great, she's worthy of love, she's worthy of redemption and forgiveness
and all the good things in life.
And so are you! Just FYI.
So, guys, you have the ability to become the best version of yourself.
A version of yourself who is far less self-conscious and more others conscious.
A version of yourself who has a more secure sense of identity.
A version of yourself who isn't scared of facing the hard stuff
because their self-respect is so high.
Is therapy the only way to get there? No.
I'm not saying it's the only way to get there,
but it certainly helps and I feel like I'm proof of that.
If you've been considering going to therapy,
but you've not been sure, consider this a push.
A casual, light, leisurely push.
We love a leisurely push. What's a leisurely push?
The final thing I'm gonna say is that I know that therapy
can be expensive and we can't all afford to go.
That's fair as well.
But there are so many books, websites, other sources out there
that can bring you to similar realizations about yourself
and encourage you to take that time for self-reflection
and to invest in working on yourself, albeit it takes more discipline to do so
because you don't have someone to keep you accountable,
but it's totally possible.
So the books that have been particularly powerful for me,
which I will link in the description of this video, are...
"Forgiving What You Can't Forget" by Lysa TerKeurst.
This is specifically about forgiveness and how forgiving others can set you free.
"Be Healed" by Bob Schuchts.
"Discovering Our Spiritual Identity".
This one was specifically recommended to me by my therapist,
and it's helped me so much. Obviously, it's spiritual.
In fact, both of the ones I just mentioned are also spiritual.
"Searching for and Maintaining Peace" by Fr. Jacques Philippe.
Again, spiritual.
But peace is spiritual.
Prove me wrong.
"The Great Divorce" by C. S. Lewis.
This one's a fictional tale about a bus ride from hell to heaven.
I read this in an afternoon.
So many great things that encourage you to introspect about the meaning of life
and who you are as a person. Obviously, very spiritual.
And "The Body Keeps the Score" by...
Oh. Nope. That's the wrong one.
"The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M. D.
This is the only non-spiritual one, although you can argue that it is spiritual
because all healing is spiritual.
Prove me wrong.
This book is really really good. It goes into... *trauma* ...
And I love the title: "The Body Keeps the Score" in that...
what it's implying is that everything that you go through in life
has some kind of consequence in that it builds up
- whether it's in your mind, your body or your soul -
you're going to have to process it and deal with it at some point.
Just so fascinating!
This guy did a lot of the foundational research
into deciding that "PTSD" was a different diagnosis
from things like anxiety or depression and how it differs from those things.
It's got so many diagrams, so many scientific explanations
about what... *trauma* ... is the different parts of the brain.
So dense. So so dense, but so good in understanding how your mind works
and helping you to believe that you do have power
in overcoming those problematic or less in line with truth neural pathways.
And, guys, I just can't even describe to you
how beautiful it is to have that realization.
The amount of neural pathways that I have rewired
with the help of my therapist...
I just can't believe that two years ago I was seeing things completely different.
I saw myself completely differently.
I was enslaved by all of these thought patterns and habits
and ways of thinking that I didn't even know were there
or that there was another way to be.
But there is hope! There's so much hope for healing.
There's so much hope for you respecting yourself
and for leading a really good life.
Yes, the work is so hard at times, but it is so incredibly worth it;
and you can do it.
Even if you can't afford therapy, just reading stuff like this
and taking the time, making the active choice
to spend five minutes of the day in contemplation, analyzing yourself,
thinking about those things that are really important:
"How am I treating my loved ones? How am I treating myself?
What's my opinion of myself? Where's my self-worth at?
What's my self-image? What's my image of others?
How many times do I think about myself in the day vs others?"
These thoughts are beautiful and valuable, and they will escalate over time because...
I like to think of psychological development
as standing in a river in that you have two options:
to go with the current or fight against the current.
The hard psychological work of therapy is what I would consider
pushing against the current.
But if you're standing still...
It's impossible to stand still in a strong current;
you are either pushing against it
or the current will inevitably be pushing you.
So you're either going forwards or you're going backwards.
Pushing against the current is hard, but the waters will still, eventually...
I can't carry this metaphor much further.
Anyway, it's probably enough 'Fi' from me.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
As always, you, guys, are great.
Thank you for sticking around for this video.
I hope you got something out of it.
I hope that I've provided some food for thought for you
or, at the very least, a different way to look at yourself in your life today
and see yourself as a valuable person who is worthy of dignity, love, respect
and all the good things that this life has to offer.
So thanks for listening. I'll catch you, guys, later.
Bye!