A Few Words on Therapy, Time, and Learning to Take Up Space

I am not a traditional therapist.

When I was in my teens, I saw two psychologists. At the time, I remember thinking it was nonsense, it didn't feel useful to me, it felt disconnected from what I was actually living inside.

I was depressed as a child and as a teenager, and that inner state was so familiar, that it felt normal, even though it was heavy. I didn't question it because I didn't know another way of being.

Then one day I met someone who was simply smiling, and I realised that I wanted to smile too! I felt a genuine desire to change how I was living inside myself. In that moment, I decided that I was going to do something about it. Over the years that followed, through working on myself and turning inward, I gradually managed to come out of depression and to shift my inner state on my own.

That shift didn't happen without cost. Choosing myself meant slowly letting go of expectations that were not mine, and stepping away from versions of me that were shaped around being acceptable, useful, or easy for others. It meant disappointing people at times, and sitting with the discomfort of that. But it also meant beginning to listen to what I needed, rather than living from the outside in.

While I was still in that process, I was walking through a market and came across a book on herbal remedies...light bulb moment...this is what I want to do, I said to myself! I then trained in different holistic approaches such as emotional freedom technique, neuro linguistic programming, Bach remedies, and others. At the time, I was looking for a quick fix, I wanted something that could change my internal state without having to stay too long with the pain.

Those approaches gave me tools, and they taught me a lot. But they also showed me that even when something helps, emotions don't move on command, they have their own timing.

When I later started my doctorate in counselling psychology, I was still resisting therapy as an idea, and yet, that experience taught me that emotions need time, and experiences need space. What we feel is not a thought to be corrected, there is also the body, there is memory, there is meaning. There is also the way we have learned to survive, to belong, and to make sense of ourselves in the world.

It would be comforting to believe that things could change quickly, that understanding alone would be enough. But the work I have come to trust moves more slowly, because it involves staying with what we usually rush past.

This is why I work the way I do now.

I don't believe there is one way that works for everyone. We are all different, with different histories, sensitivities, and ways of responding. What supports one person might feel unhelpful or even intrusive to another. In my work, I draw from different approaches and ways of working, depending on what feels relevant for the person in front of me. I listen first, and then we go from there.

In my sessions, I am less interested in quick answers and more interested in the questions that actually matter to the person in front of me.

Questions like:
Who have I learned to be in order to be loved?
What have I had to put aside to keep relationships going?
What do I feel responsible for that might not be mine?
What happens when I try to take up space?
What feels heavy, confusing, or missing in my life right now?

Sometimes these questions are spoken. Sometimes they are felt in the body before they can be named.

Does therapy make you selfish?

For many people, therapy is the first place where they experience the possibility not only of being seen for who they are, but also of not being judged for it. Sitting in a space that feels protected often allows relational needs to surface, needs that for a long time have gone unmet, along with emotions that have remained silent in the body and that, over time, have often taken the form of symptoms.

Giving ourselves permission to validate our own experiences is not easy, let alone expressing them, especially when this was missing in our personal history. From an early age, we learn how to manage on our own, particularly when things become difficult. We become skilled at sensing what can be said, done, or shown, and we try to behave accordingly.

In some life stories, that way becomes leaving oneself behind and becoming highly attuned to the needs and expectations of others. Taking care of them so thoroughly that self care is gradually pushed aside.

At times, therapy brings a change in direction. Discovering that one’s own needs also deserve to be met, that one’s own emotions also have value, can bring a strong desire to take up space, as if to say, now it is my turn to exist...a choice appears, often experienced as the only possible one, between keeping others close by renouncing oneself, or staying whole and attentive to oneself while stepping away from caring for the needs of others, and when an inner shift is underway, it's not unusual to lean towards the second option.

In some therapeutic journeys, focusing exclusively on oneself is experienced as a form of compensation for what was missing, an action that sometimes takes shape naturally while trying to find a new way of being with oneself and with others. It can take many awkward attempts before understanding how to include oneself in one’s own life without excluding everything else. How to honour one’s own needs without denying those of others. How to make sense of guilt. How to draw boundaries while remaining human. How to take care of oneself, even while taking care of others.

Perhaps the work starts with something simple, learning how to take care of who we are rather than who we think we should be, letting compassion slowly replace urgency, allowing ourselves to move at a human pace, one that makes room for doubt, resistance, and change, without rushing towards solutions or demanding clarity too quickly, trusting that staying with ourselves in this way is already a form of care.