What Is Therapy?

I ask myself this question most mornings as I stand in the kitchen, making my coffee to bring out to my office. It is part of my process of preparing my Self, my mind, body and soul, for my work. What is therapy? What is this beautiful thing I get to do with people each day? I am aware that my intentionality as a therapist has a big impact on who I am and how I work, which has a very big impact on how my clients feel in my presence, and whether or not they feel safe with me. This is the biggest factor in how much healing work we can do together. So I take this question very seriously. It matters to me. What is therapy? What is this beautiful thing I get to do with people each day?

There is a small part of me that speaks to me now, as I write, who fears being perceived as too sentimental, too emotional, too soft to share. Her fear makes sense to me based on my lived experience. So I am going to honour her fear, hold her hand, take the risk of sounding too sentimental here in this blog, and make the choice not to self-abandon, but to be authentic and embrace my sentimentality so that I can show her it’s safe, that I’ve got her, and that we can be who we are in this space.

So…you’re getting the real me here in this blog. You’re getting my big sentimental vulnerable heart and curious mind. And as time goes by you will also get the real Tala, Allie, and Karen, my teammates here at Seasons, when you hear from them as we take turns contributing to this weekly blog. 

For me, therapy is the intentional engagement in a process of self-discovery in the presence of a safe and caring other. This presence of the therapist, this therapeutic relationship, must bring you a sense of safety for it to be effective, so that you can be honest (with yourself and out loud) without having to experience shame or judgement. For therapy to be effective, it must be a place for you to externalize what is internal, to get stuff out, reveal your truth, and explore what it means for you, so that you can begin to hear your own insights and knowings. There is natural healing power in a safe relationship; it holds space for your truths, your pain and your innate wisdom.

That said, you don’t have to feel pain to come to therapy. You don’t have to feel like something is broken within you. You don’t have to feel sick. You can feel that way, of course, but you don’t have to. 

I believe that you can be anywhere you are on your life journey, and therapy can be helpful. It can be a place to come in crisis, and it can also be a place to come and just be with yourself, to see what’s there. You can come to therapy because you want to understand yourself better; to learn more about your feelings, your thoughts, your actions, your relationships, your choices. You can come to therapy because you want to tend to your internal experience, your selfhood, like you would tend to your body in movement, or a blueberry garden ripe for the harvest. As one of my beloved clients said, you can come to therapy because you want to empty the metaphoric vacuum bag of your life that has gotten full when you weren’t paying attention. Therapy can be a dedicated space for you to pause and pay attention to yourself, which is an experience we rarely get when we are busy living. Most of us don’t get that kind of space anywhere else in our lives. Empty the vacuum, harvest the garden, clear out a space.

And in the process of that, we can remember (or discover) parts of ourselves, our own voice, we can heal wounds, and we can feel more whole.

But not all therapy is the same. 

I feel like it’s important for me to name that not everybody understands therapy the same way, and so not all therapy is the same. 

Let me try and explain.

Firstly, not all therapy is the same because no two therapists are the same. Your therapist is a channel and a vehicle for the work. Your choice of therapist matters. How you feel about your therapist matters a lot. The relationship needs to feel safe, and you need to feel like you have agency in it, otherwise you are just reinforcing patterns of harm inside of you. I believe that every client should have the right to choose their therapist. Our bodies can help us make this choice by telling us how we feel. If you have had a bad experience in therapy, I recommend you try again with someone new. It’s okay to be critical about who you trust to do this work with you.

Secondly, not all therapy is the same because, through time and across the globe, there have been many different schools of thought about what therapy is. Our understandings of who we are as humans, how we are, and what we need have been, and continue to be, shaped by culture, art, politics and economics.

In relatively recent human history, wellness has been synonymous with productivity, and any mental, emotional or physical manifestations of discontentment and stress have been pathologized as illness. Mental health care, and the field of psychotherapy, became a politicized industry designed to return people to a state of productivity. This pairing was, and continues to be, both a tool and a product of colonization and capitalism. I have a high degree of sensitivity in my body to how wrong this is. I can feel it in my bones. I refuse to participate in this definition of wellness. I believe wellness is our capacity to experience the fullness of our humanity with awareness, and to trust our wisdom as our guide.

In truth, the  concept of therapy, the idea that we sit with another person who we trust, share our burdens, be listened to attentively, have our questions and insights reflected back to us, and receive gentle counsel to guide our well-being is not new. People have been seeking support from healers, guides, mentors, and elders in their communities for all of human history.

Actually, it’s built into our neurobiology to heal in this way. Humans have a natural process of surviving, regulating and healing built into our biology, just as we have a natural process of creating.

Thankfully, the field of psychotherapy is broadening and decolonizing. In the last half century, we have seen the identification and development of more types of therapy that are products and reflections of decolonization efforts and liberation movements, combined with greater depth and breadth in the realm of neuroscience.  Eco-therapies, art therapies, and somatic (body-based) therapies are examples of these; therapies that reconnect us with the healing science that exists within and between our bodies, our communities, and our natural world, therapies that allow us to feel our agency, understand our “symptoms” as wisdom and reclaim our innate power to heal. These therapies can guide us back home to ourselves, to an innate process that we can learn to trust as a resource for healing.

I feel that it is important to name that, although these therapies may feel new for some of us, and mainstream for others, they have actually been a part of most human cultures for a very long time. Modern psychotherapy is using the gifts of recent neuroscience, like the Polyvagal Theory, to validate what our ancestors have felt and known for a very long time.

This innate healing process that I lean into as a therapist can feel abstract and foreign to clients at first. If I can be bold, it can feel that way because colonization has disembodied us. For some of us, trusting our bodies is a bold and radical move. It was for me at first. Therapy can be a place to restore and rebuild that trust in yourself and your body over time. Like in any relationship, we can rebuild trust in ourselves by listening, trying to understand, being honest, taking accountability when necessary, and honouring our feelings. In learning to trust ourselves we empower ourselves to allow this natural healing process to unfold. It may feel extra hard when we carry trauma because trauma can corrode self-trust, but it is possible, and I believe it is a therapist’s job to hold the pain with you and create safety and stability to allow the medicine to emerge. 

I know this is possible because I have felt it, and I get to witness it every time I work with a client. My clients are my greatest teachers. 

Once we build familiarity with the idea of self-trust, we can see that the healing process is actually quite scientific in nature. By that I mean that we can notice and name its components, and understand its process as it unfolds. 

Here it is, in a nutshell: when we can create a safe space, allow what is there to be there, notice any fear or judgement that is causing resistance to try and protect us, get curious about that resistance, try to understand it, and invite it to trust us and soften, then we can build capacity to allow the truth of the pain to come forward and move us, which will reveal the wisdom, truth, direction, and medicine that is trying to be known. 

This is not really a quick fix, as you might imagine, although sometimes it can feel like something is clicking into place.  This process has a simplicity to it, and is also deeply profound. It can feel quite magical, but it’s actually just natural. I feel so lucky that I get to live in this miraculous natural process with my clients. It’s awe-invoking. 

As you may be able to sense, I feel a lot of passion about this work.  It matters to me.  It is important to me that, here at Seasons, we provide therapy that is safe, that doesn’t impose power over you. We want to provide the kind of therapy where you can bring your burdens and look at them in the presence of someone you trust who will not judge them, but will hold them with you to support your exploration and discovery of meaning for you, so that you can learn to trust yourself. It is important to me that we meet you where you are, walk with you in a way that feels best for you, and be with you for as long as you want us to stay.

Why is this important to me? Where is this coming from for me? How did I come to this particular understanding of therapy? All of this comes from my experience of pain and my own journey, guided by loving and supportive therapists over the last two decades, from disconnection and suffering to a continuous process of healing and growth.  When I allowed myself to feel the pain of it all, I also found the medicine in it, and it changed my life. I went from being totally dissociated, living mostly in my mind, to building capacity for my feelings, finding embodiment slowly, and finally reclaiming full body autonomy. I am safe enough now to be myself, trust myself, and love myself, and I want the same for you, as you feel ready. It is not light work to begin. It is brave work. And, when we can really learn to trust ourselves, we can feel that there is lightness in it, amongst the dark. The darkness is scary, and it takes courage to go through it. That’s what therapy is; it’s having someone to walk with you through the dark and hold space for you until you can find your sources of light.