I have had many people describe how much they’ve gotten out of their one-on-one talk therapy sessions and encourage me to go to talk therapy. I have read many complaints (often from women) about how they can get their partners to go to couples counseling, but there’s a wall when it comes to one-on-one talk therapy, and they feel stuck.
So, I just want to flat out say it: I have been to one-on-one talk therapy, I don’t find much help in it. That’s ok for me, I hope it can be ok for you, too. There are other healing modalities to explore!
One-on-one therapy can certainly work well when you have found someone you have a good rapport with. I have tried several therapists, and I did not feel a rapport or really feel like their feedback spoke to me and my challenges at all. So, finding a therapist becomes a monumental task – searching for providers, figuring out insurance, scheduling initial consultations, repeating the same parts of the story over and over again, and perhaps even finding that it wasn’t much help in the end. Maybe your therapist has done a lot of work with their own suffering, maybe they haven’t. Maybe they specialize in your type of struggle, maybe they don’t. Maybe they can speak to you in ways that are impactful, and maybe they just annoy you. There is so much friction. I am very understanding of everyone who resists it, as much as I understand it has helped many people. It is not a universal solution, but one that relies on luck.
I went to therapy after my father tried to commit suicide. I didn’t feel like I got much understanding or tooling out of the process. Several people thought I should try to “get over it” in various ways, and there were many encouragements that I should focus on my studies and my work. Overall, that was a pretty big let down to me in a really difficult time in my life. Repeating the friction-involved process over the years has not encouraged me further.
But I don’t think that means we have an excuse to avoid help. Because there are alternatives – like group work. I have participated in several support and sharing groups. I’ve also offered peer-led support groups. It’s a format I love and have gained so much from, even though it gets much less attention than one-on-one talk therapy (at least in conversations I have).
In group work, I don’t have to find the right person to talk to or develop a rapport with anyone. I am exposed to others, some who I will resonate with and some who I don’t. The group isn’t there to offer advice, but rather to share their own experiences and to listen to others. And there is a great power in that. I find a lot of acceptance, simply by being listened to by others without interruption. I find that I’m not alone, that the struggle I thought was so lonely is shared by others. I am often surprised at how an individual I thought was so put together has many struggles on the inside. I gain insight into my own struggles and patterns by listening to the struggles of others. I can see what it looks like to be further ahead on the path of healing and transformation – and that it is still a path that has its ups and downs. I can appreciate how far I have come, and cultivate compassion for those who are just starting.
In group work, we practice showing up. We practice sitting and listening, without judgment or attempts to fix. We practice speaking about our own experiences only, not speaking for groups or for other people. We practice sharing honestly of our own experience, encouraged by the vulnerability of others. This is all valuable medicine, and I think medicine that is best administered in a group. Sure, you get less time to ventilate your problems than in an hour of talk therapy, but you gain so much more in terms of perspective and acceptance and a shared struggle.
And that’s the right format for me.