7 Things You Can Learn From Therapy
As therapy gains increasing popularity, with many therapists in Dublin experiencing waitlists of weeks or even months, it is natural to wonder what makes therapy so effective. A key aspect of therapy is that it provides a safe, confidential, and non-judgmental space where individuals can be fully authentic. In this environment, people can express their deepest fears, articulate thoughts they have never shared before, and explore their emotions openly. Therapy is also a collaborative process, meaning that clients and therapists work together as partners in this journey.
As a psychotherapist and counsellor based in Dublin, offering both in-person and online services, I have observed the profound impact therapy can have on individuals’ lives. While the benefits of therapy are often nuanced, I aim to share seven key insights and skills that therapy can offer. These insights are both attainable and measurable, providing a clearer understanding of what therapy can achieve.
1. Setting healthy boundaries
In therapy, the clients can explore situations that bring up discomfort or distress in interactions with others. This exploration can help to identify when personal limits are breached, needs unmet or when something does not align with their values.
Therapy offers an experimental space where a client can try out different ways of communicating those messages to others as a way of establishing or maintaining boundaries.This eventually leads to more balanced, healthy and fulfilling relationships.
2. Managing stress and anxiety
In therapy, clients work to identify the specific triggers that contribute to their stress and In therapy, clients explore both the immediate triggers and the underlying causes of their stress and anxiety. This involves identifying specific stressors and understanding how they relate to deeper, often long-standing emotional patterns. Therapy helps clients recognize and understand their symptoms, such as physical tension or persistent worry, and how these are influenced by past experiences and current stressors. Through this process, clients also learn various methods and strategies to manage their symptoms, including cognitive-behavioral techniques, mindfulness practices, and stress reduction exercises. By addressing both immediate triggers and root causes, clients can develop more effective coping mechanisms and achieve a more balanced approach to managing their stress and anxiety.
3. Emotional self-regulation
Developing emotional self-regulation involves learning to understand, acknowledge, and navigate one’s emotions effectively. This includes recognizing various emotional states and exploring their origins, whether related to current situations or past experiences. Clients work on their ability to sit with and fully experience their emotions, gradually increasing their capacity to handle intense feelings without becoming overwhelmed or reacting impulsively. By cultivating this skill, individuals can achieve greater emotional balance and respond to their emotions in a more measured and adaptive way.
4. Prioritising your wellbeing
Many individuals may not realise they are not prioritising their wellbeing or that their daily actions do not support their overall health and effectiveness. Therapy helps clients explore their personal values and boundaries to uncover where their routines and self-care practices may be misaligned with what actually promotes their wellbeing. By identifying these gaps, clients can establish boundaries that protect their mental and emotional health and adopt self-care strategies that enhance their overall health, productivity, and presence in relationships. This alignment fosters a more balanced and fulfilling life, allowing individuals to be more grounded, productive, and engaged in their roles as parents, friends, and professionals.
5. Recognising your patterns
Therapy provides an opportunity to identify and analyse recurring patterns in thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Clients might notice consistent themes in their thoughts, feelings, and actions, for example: a tendency to react defensively in certain situations or a recurring sense of inadequacy. By examining these patterns, individuals can trace their origins to past experiences or ingrained beliefs that shape their current responses.
For instance, someone might recognize a pattern of procrastination. Looking at it closer can reveal that it is linked to deeper fears of failure or a habitual response of withdrawing during conflicts.
Therapy encourages individuals to explore these patterns through discussion, self-reflection, the use of imagination and creativity. This can help to understand how these patterns impact their interactions with others, or their overall well-being. One of the benefits of this self-awareness is that it allows for the gradual adjustment of ingrained behaviours, fostering more useful responses in daily life.
6. Nurturing your Inner Child
The concept of Inner Child involves reconnecting with the parts of oneself that hold unhealed childhood experiences and unmet needs. While doing this kind of therapeutic work, clients may discover that they are still carrying the pain, fear or anger from their early years. Those feelings can then be triggered in one’s daily life, leaving one confused as to where the emotions came from.
By engaging with one’s Inner Child, individuals can address these long-standing wounds and offer themselves the care and validation they may have missed earlier in life. This process often includes revisiting and reprocessing past experiences with a compassionate perspective, allowing for healing and growth. Through therapeutic techniques like guided imagery or reflective exercises, individuals can learn to meet their own emotional needs and integrate this understanding into their present life.
7. Building healthy relationships
Developing healthy relationships often (not always) starts with a journey of self-discovery and self-connection. The process of reconnecting with oneself involves exploring personal values, boundaries, and emotional needs. This process can reveal internal obstacles to forming or maintaining healthy relationships such as self-doubt or unresolved past conflicts. By gaining clarity on these internal dynamics, individuals become more empowered and can make more conscious decisions while navigating social situations and relationships.
Final thoughts: the long-term benefits of therapy
As individuals navigate the complex process of personal development through therapy, they uncover insights and skills that extend beyond the therapy room. Recognizing internal patterns to meeting or communicating our emotional needs, prioritising our own wellbeing, self-regulating emotions or fostering healthier relationships are just a few of many lessons and benefits of regular therapy sessions.
Since each of us have different needs, experiences, or even personalities, we all have our own unique learnings and insights that we gain through therapeutic work. Ultimately, the role of the therapy is to support the client on their path to self-actualisation, self-healing and living a fulfilling life.