- Hey, everybody, today I wanna talk about why therapy
can, at times, cause us to feel worse,
and I also just wanted to remind you
that I offer twice weekly journal prompts
through my YouTube memberships,
and I now have a brand new members only perk.
Along with the journal prompts,
you will now also have access to my new emojam emojis.
Emojams are the next generation of emojis.
They are animated and they have sound created
by yours truly.
When in doubt, journal it out.
You can use these audio gifs in chat apps like iMessage,
WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, et cetera.
All you have to do to access them
is download the emojam app,
link in the description,
and then sign in with your YouTube account
so that they know you are a YouTube member.
Now I know not everyone can afford to be a member,
so I wanted to give you all access to one free new emojam.
You can try it out, play with it and see what you think.
Back into today's regularly scheduled programming.
So often I hear from you that you've started therapy
or are finally opening up about what's really going on
and you find yourself feeling worse.
Ugh, I know, it's so frustrating
to finally reach out for help and not feel better,
but I want you to know that this is completely normal,
and it happens to almost all of us when we get into therapy,
and to better understand why this is happening,
let's talk about some of the causes.
First, if we have been stuffing things down
for years and years
and finally decided to start talking about it,
there can be a lot to go through.
A lot to feel and a lot to make sense of.
I like to think of this process
as me sorting through things
and organizing them appropriately.
Like if I'm talking through a toxic relationship that I had,
in my mind, it's like I have one box
that's for the things connected directly to that person.
Another box for the things
that are directly connected to me and my issues.
And finally, a third box for the things
that I have attached to that relationship,
but maybe aren't actually part of it.
My work in therapy is to dump all this stuff out
that I feel isn't in any way connected
to that toxic relationship and sort through it.
I have to figure out what's mine to care for
and what isn't something that I have control over,
what belongs to them,
but seeing all that emotional stuff
just thrown out onto the floor of my mind can be hard
and overwhelming at times,
and you guessed it, make me feel worse at first.
Not to mention that it does take some time
to dig through it all and put it into the appropriate box.
So being patient with myself
as I classify and categorize is important,
even though it's uncomfortable.
Another reason therapy can make us feel worse at first
is because ignorance is bliss, for a while at least.
And once our therapist helps us realize
some of our unhealthy patterns or relationships
that, you know, maybe aren't so good for us.
We can't unknow that information.
Do you know what I mean?
It's, it's like we've seen something
and now we can't unsee it no matter how hard we try.
Once we realize that our family maybe refuses
to acknowledge any upsets
and instead likes to distract with food,
just for an example,
then whenever we go home,
we're going to notice that.
We're gonna see it and it can be upsetting.
Almost like it was easier to be there and see them
when we didn't have any knowledge of those patterns.
I personally remember my therapist helping me see
how unhealthy one of my friendships was
and noting that this friend only called me
when she needed something
and was never there for me when I needed the support.
At first, it was really hard for me to believe,
but then it started to play out right in front of me,
and it was so upsetting to almost feel forced to recognize
just how toxic this friendship had become.
And I realized I couldn't be in that friendship anymore,
and that was difficult and uncomfortable,
and you could even say that
I was making a lot of progress in therapy.
However, I felt a lot worse than I did before.
Or another example of this would be
when my sister-in-law told me and my family
that we always use the phrase, I was gonna say.
We do it when we agree with something
or we want to just want to pull the conversation
into another topic.
Once she drew our awareness to it,
we couldn't stop noticing ourselves saying it,
and I still say it a lot,
but I always know when I say it now.
It's almost like it was pulled from my unconscious
to my conscious mind
and I can't make it go back no matter how hard I try.
Another reason we can feel worse at first
is if we are trying to stop some unhealthy coping skill
like self-injurious behaviors,
eating disorder-related activities,
or abuse of drugs or alcohol,
or, you know, you get that gist.
When we're trying to stop that,
we can go through withdrawal.
Remember, these things were our only coping skills
for so long that taking them away
isn't taking away the thing
that we were trying to deal with or cope with.
It just takes away the thing
that helped us numb out from it.
So we can feel all the things that we were stuffing down,
and that's why relapse rates are at their highest
when we first try to stop,
and I know, I know you guys tell me this all the time,
I know that the healthy coping skills
we try to replace them with, they don't work as well,
and it can take up to five or maybe more
of those good coping skills to stop us
from going back to the harmful one.
So just be patient.
Have some compassion for yourself
as you push through these urges,
and please, please, please
get some professional help and support.
There are online groups for all of these issues,
whether that's AA or NA or Hope for Recovery
has a ton of groups for eating disorders
and self-injury and trauma and things like that.
Not to mention therapists out there
to help get you through the early stages
because we all know it's a process not perfection.
Overall, doing the work in therapy is hard.
And since we often haven't done this work before,
it's gonna be trying and exhausting at times.
But trust me when I tell you that it's worth it
and it will help us feel better in the long run.
Because don't forget that stuffing things down,
it didn't make us feel any better,
and that's why we reached out for help
and started seeing a therapist in the first place,
and that's why I'm always encouraging you also to journal
about what's going on, how you're feeling,
and all of that stuff, because then,
if we're having a hard time in therapy
or feeling like we haven't made any progress,
we can look back and read through our own notes and thoughts
and see just how far we've actually come.
I know therapy is hard.
Being honest about what we're thinking
and feeling can be painful,
but trust me when I say that it does get easier
and you are definitely worth the effort.
Have a wonderful week and I will see you next time, bye.
(gentle music)