The Risks Of Therapy

It would be nice to think that therapy will make you feel better all of the time. After all, that's why people enter therapy, isn't it? I mean, who enters therapy if they think it's going to make them feel worse than they already do? Well, maybe a masochist would do that; would even count on it. But short of that, I think it's realistic to suppose that people enter therapy because they believe it will help them to feel good. There have even been therapy self help books written with titles like "The Feel Good Book".

It may come as a surprise then to discover that the therapeutic process can elicit difficult, painful, frightening feelings also, and that every session will not end with you, the client, feeling better than when you arrived. Along these lines we have other therapy related books with titles like "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden", and "Love Is Never Enough".

If we conceive of therapy as a journey of healing, as a process through time, we will be better able to imagine that this journey might have down's as well as up's; bumps and turns in the road;
bad weather as well as good; and a guarantee of changes along the way. From this point of view we can say that the process of therapy requires a certain amount of courage; a certain adventurousness of spirit; a certain willingness to be surprised, disappointed, challenged, and ultimately strengthened by our experiences.

Not much different from a life well lived, you might say. And you might be right.





www.matthewdavid-lpcc.webs.com