People have asked me many times questions about therapy. The most frequent ones include:
- What do you do in therapy?
- Do I have to talk about my parents?
- If I have a problem, do I have to go to a therapist?
- Can I be my own therapist?
Let me start by saying that my relationship advice for women is you can be your own therapist—if you ask the right questions, and if you are willing to be brave enough to face yourself honestly. And facing yourself will include a combination of examining your feelings, thoughts, and actions, and then making connections between your present situation, your previous intimate relationships, and, yes, your childhood, and parents. Your final steps are to move toward a solution to your problem, and increase your self-awareness and knowledge. If you feel confused, or if you repeat love mistakes, then seeking a therapist can be very helpful—as long as you keep up your emotional bravery and commitment to change.
And that’s what I do as a therapist. I’m a coach, an educator, a mystery-solver, and a cheerleader. Well, I’m over-simplifying, but you can use these roles to help yourself.
Here’s a beginning approach that might help you become your own therapist. If you came to see me, I would most likely (but not always) ask the following questions. I would probably begin from the outside and work inward. In other words, I would start with your situation in the “here and now,” and link it to your fears, feelings, thoughts, behavior, and family history in the “there and then” in your life. There’s just no way around it—at some point you have to connect the dots between time zones. We are all Emotional Time Travelers. After all, you weren’t hatched. Childhood is a mix of experiences, personality, luck, abilities, genetics, and the wild cards of life. The good news is that you don’t have to unroll your whole story every time you want to fix your situation. Sometimes, just an awareness of the link can spark you to learn and change. The secret is that no real change occurs without your making these time zone connections.
So, let’s imagine that you are making an appointment with yourself to help you solve a love problem. Let’s say you have become very unhappy with your man. He seems too controlling and insensitive. Here are some key questions you can ask you:
We’ll start from the outside. Think of your situation as a mystery where you have to find the clues that lead you to solving it. Good detectives “run a movie” in their heads. They want to construct a story that makes sense. Keep in mind your movie as you integrate your answers to these questions into your movie about you. And keep your eye on you—not him!
- Could I have predicted that I would be in this situation?
- What signs did I miss?
- What is my best explanation for why I missed them? What is my best guess as to why I am in this situation?
- What mix of mindset, situation, personality, fears, hopes, and hurts did I bring to this relationship in the beginning?
- How does my family life as a child fit into all this?
If you were very brave and honest, you might have told your story like the one below. (This story is fictional. It comes from a composite from my research about women and love.)
“Looking back, I think I was in rebound mode. I broke up with Guy #1 because he ended up being too unreliable. At first, he was so sweet. So understanding. I loved that I could tell him anything. We were a perfect example of “opposites attract.” I was the go-getter, and he had his sights a little smaller. He said he loved my intelligence and reliability. And, to be honest, I liked being in charge.
“So, I guess I missed that he would prove to be so passive. When I got sick, he was nowhere for me. I didn’t see it coming. So, when I broke up with him, I vowed to go with a more responsible guy.
“But I read Guy #2 wrong, too! Oh, he was a take charge guy, and I loved it. But I didn’t see that he wanted to take charge of me as well. He turned out to be very critical of me. I ended up not feeling good enough for him.
“I just had a brain wave—it isn’t the guys who are the problem. It’s me. I think I go to extreme opposites in love. No matter what I do, I end up unhappy in the same way. I either make excuses for my guy, or running to please him. Oh, yuck.
“I guess I don’t know how to be. My dad divorced my mom because he said she was too boring and clinging. My dad is a high-powered man. So my mom got a live-in boyfriend who lies around the house a lot.
“Wow—another breakthrough: I guess I am swimming back and forth between extremely different kinds of guys, just like my mother does. And, well, I guess I learned from her that you’d better put up with anything a man does so that you won’t be alone.
“I think my next tasks are to learn more about relationships, keep my eye out for signals of unreliability and insensitivity in a man, and keep my eye on my own feelings and actions.”
Bingo!
What’s your story? Please share below in the comments section. Make sure it connects your emotional time zones so you can solve your mystery about you.
I wish you bravery and happiness.
