Your Questions About Therapy and Counseling Answered
As you might guess, the beginning of a new year is a busy time of year for therapy and counseling.
A lot of people are either coming off of the Holidays depressed, faced with family sh*t once again, or really shook up. Similarly, many other people are diving into the new year and wanting a fresh start or are just sick of the old ways of thinking, feeling, and being.
Whatever the case, this is a time when many people want to reach out to a therapist for change and have questions. In this article, you’ll find answers to your questions about therapy and counseling so you can start healing your soul.
Why do therapy?
Naturally, as with any new venture, this desire for counseling brings a whole lot of questions along with it. Very often, the first question regarding counseling is ‘Why do therapy, at all?’ And this is a legit question. Here’s a quick vid to answer that!
I personally believe that one of the other first questions for a lot of people, nowadays, particularly men, is just, What do I do about my own perception of counseling?
I get a lot of people coming to me who’ve either:
Never been in counseling (often because they see it as weak, stupid, or just plain weird),
Always saw themselves as someone who wouldn’t be caught dead in counseling (precisely for the reasons just mentioned, or perhaps because they never saw themselves as ever having any problems,) or
Have had such bad, blah, or ineffective experiences with counseling in the past that they’ve become jaded against therapy every working.
So often, the first stumbling block is just reaching the point where past perceptions of therapy are now outweighed by the desire or even need for change. And, as you might guess, this hunger for change is always, always, always driven by pain of one sort or another – emotional, relationship, familial, financial, career, medical, loss/death, etc.
Change will not occur until the pain gets bad enough.
-Sven
And, until that pain has gotten bad enough over a long enough period of time, such that you know you can’t do it on your own and you’re really broken down by it all, you won’t open up enough in therapy to truly accomplish anything significant.
The Value of Pain for Effective Therapy
Great pain brings great opportunity (for growth).
This is partly why I am very hesitant when taking on young clients, say under 25. Very often, though certainly not always, while they have experienced much pain in their young lives, often at the hands of family, they still often have spirits that are quite strong and able to carry the pain of the load. While that may sound like a good thing, it’s often counter-productive to the counseling process, because it can mean they have not been broken down enough and frustrated enough with nothing working to be truly open to being led in counseling.
But, pack that same load of pain onto that young person and let them carry it for another 15 or 20 years with no relenting from life, and by 35 or 40 they are so worn down that they are open to anything, particularly new ways of thinking and living.
A 40-year-old in pain is often very different from a 20-year-old with a similar past. There’s a malleability that comes. We become stripped of the strength that in our 20s might’ve caused us to dabble in counseling or consider new ideas, but never really buy in fully.
It’s the old economic theory of compounded interest. If a 20-year-old takes on $100,000 of debt to start a business, she has a $100,000 debt. But if she never makes a payment on that loan, that same loan 20 years later has become so swollen with interest that the note will suffocate and crush her.
All this to say, if you aren’t broken down by life enough, you aren’t truly ready for counseling, growth, and the radical changes in your life that are likely necessary. And, pain alone will shatter, or push you through, past perceptions of counseling.
The ego, like the egg, is of no use,
until it is broken.
-Unknown
What are some specific reasons for considering therapy?
In a way, this question has already been answered.
Counseling is always driven by either past pain, present pain, and/or fear of future pain. Breaking it down further, as briefly mentioned above, the need for pain alleviation can come in any sector of life, from relationships to careers. But, what it always turns into is emotional pain.
The struggles outside of us or from our past create such powerful feelings inside of us that we simply become unable to bear them any longer. And, in my experience, that internal emotional pain generally manifests in one or two ways – depression and/or anxiety – or is some derivative of these two. Carry anxiety or depression long enough, and it will wear down even the most willful and strongest of individuals.
>> See Healing From Depression And Avoiding Suicide
The soul is more powerful than the will.
-Sven
And so, there grows a longing in the soul to make the pain stop. But, too often, a lot of energy gets expended merely by coping with the pain, handling it, and bearing it further as best you’re able. You’ll find a million therapists who will teach coping strategies. And, there are times and places when coping is needed in the moment. But coping ain’t healing. It’s managing the pain, rather than making it go away.
And, I just so happen to believe, born of three decades of counseling others and ample amounts of my own personal pain and that of those close to me, that most emotional pain can be eliminated. Yes, there will be new pains that come; that’s part of life. But the difference between carrying around all that past pain and not doing so is that when the new pains come you deal with just the new pain, not the old and the new, at the same time.
The accrual of new pains on top of the accretion of old pains is the interest compounding on that loan and load. The past has become so heavy as it has acquired more pains that new pains, however slight, become unbearable.
This is why many people run – in relationships, in career, in parenting, in life – from anything that bears even a whiff of bringing any sort of discomfort, pain, frustration, blame, or even responsibility.
Their love cup is already chock full of so much manure, maggots, rocks, crud, and devilishly awful stuff that they cannot bear even one more drop. Not one.
And so, this person, or anyone who has been carrying that past pain long enough, either chooses to begin (or continue) a life of escape from the pain – booze, pills, gambling, over-working, over-parenting, busyness, food addiction, cheating, over-exercising, excessive shopping, excessive gaming, excessive TV, excessive swiping/scrolling, and on and on – which is really just a version of coping.
Or, they are tired of coping and the inevitable crash after the high, or the inevitable return to reality that always comes with it. And so, they turn finally to healing, to making the pain finally stop.
Enter counseling and therapy.
What should I look for in a therapist?
I’ve done several videos on different aspects of finding/picking a therapist.
The bottom line is that it can be damn hard. Sure, a simple Google search will disclose plenty of sites that catalog therapists. But going through the process of discerning what someone is really like, whether they’ll be a good fit for you, and whether they’re any good and can lead you through a transformation to healing and a new you, well, that’s a trickier thing. And, because everyone’s needs, wants, and personalities are different, there simply are no hard and fast rules that work for everyone. There just aren’t.
When I was in my 12-year suicidal depression, I saw several therapists, some on recommendation from friends, some because they were in-network, and some just random. Not a dang one helped me significantly. Not one made me feel they actually knew what they were doing and were leading me, and certainly not faster, deeper, and more powerfully than my own journaling and self-work were.
In the end, I had to find and create ways to heal myself, which is why, in part, it took me so long. I had to reinvent the wheel. And, I made a pretty damn fine wheel, one that has powered the engine of transforming a whole lot of people since then. I mean, I was a good counselor and pastor before that. But, if you find your own way out of the dark forest, you become a damn expert at your sectors of the forest.
So, if you’re not having success in therapy, go to the books page on the Badass Counseling website and start with my book, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup. It will take you deep and well down the road of transformation. Then follow it up with BADASS WISDOM there, as well, and some of the books by other authors recommended in Love Cup.
I am a big fan of getting referrals from friends or trusted sources, as well as reading testimonials. A therapist who doesn’t make those available is either very new to the work or simply lacks them.
Beyond that, here’s a quickie vid to give you things to think about in the hunting.
Do I need to have tried other methods, approaches, or resources before doing therapy?
No.
Heck, a decent percentage of my own clientele have never had therapy in their lives, in no small part because I tend to attract the real tough nuts – people who wouldn’t be caught dead in therapy, have always sworn therapy is a scam or doesn’t do anything, as well as folks who’ve been through all types of therapy and never really gotten the success and transformation they’ve been seeking.
So, no, you don’t need any counseling experience. However, I tell folks you do need to come with two things.
Courage
The first is courage. Courage is the very fulcrum on which all transformation of self turns. If you do not have courage to push through fears, you’ll never go into the ugliest, scariest parts of healing the soul. You’ll pull back when it starts to get uncomfortable. And, to be honest, if you are not experiencing discomfort in therapy, you ain’t doing therapy, you’re coasting, or your therapist sucks, lacks courage, isn’t leading you, or is just milking the clock. Usually, the pain of life is what brings the courage to finally face all the stuff you’re going to go through in good therapy, which is all the stuff you’ve been running from your whole life.
Open Up
Courage is what makes the second piece happen, and this piece is the one thing every therapist needs.
You have to bring a willingness to keep opening. I tell my clients, in advance, that if they don’t open up, I can’t help them; no therapist can help them.
What type of therapy should I do?
This is a trickier question for me to answer, if I’m honest.
See, as you’ve heard me say a hundred times, I’m not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or any sort of medical therapist. I’m a soul counselor. That’s it. Nothing more. I don’t deal with mental illness. I have plenty of people who come to me who have mental illnesses, and I tell them I am NOT a mental health professional and will not address any diagnoses they have received. But, often they choose to work with me anyway, because they want soul healing. Well, that I can do!
So, when it comes to this question of what sort of therapy you should do, I come up with a big, fat goose egg – zero! I got nothin’ for you. In fact, I don’t even recommend soul counselors or spiritual counseling, because I’ve never met one that I felt kicks ass. I’m sure there are a few out there, but I’ve not met them.
Similarly, I generally do not recommend religious counseling, if you’re wanting to do soul healing, odd as that may sound.
As a former clergyman and son of a clergyman, I can quite emphatically say that it is extraordinarily rare that you will get counseling from a cleric that comes from anything other than a measure of dogmatism. There are a few out there who can counsel without the dogma, but don’t hold your breath.
And, since I’m not a medical professional, I am in no position to recommend any sort of psychological counseling. I definitely prefer to just stay in my lane.
All of that said, there is one variety of psychological counseling that I have been counseled in, decades ago, and that I knew some practitioners of.
Depth Psychology
It’s this semi-obscure little field of psychology known as ‘depth psychology.’ I’ve always been a big fan of the writings of Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, and, of course, thence Carl Jung (he a fellow preacher’s kid). Depth Psychology grows out of that strain and speaks to my own personal sensibilities.
But, it is not everyone’s cup of tea. My fondness for Depth psychology is a personal preference, not some statement of absolute truth.
What are worthy goals and expectations for therapy?
Well, I’m a bit of a realist in the department of expectations.
Realistically, if I genuinely want to change my life and finally be happy, and I’m paying someone to do that, and I’m willing to keep opening up through the scary parts, then I damn well expect to get transformation from therapy.
Realistically, a therapist should be delivering what is promised or implied.
So, am I saying that a therapist should guarantee their work? Yes. I do. I simply tell people that if they do the work I bring to their feet and they’re not satisfied with the changes inside themselves and in their lives, I’ll happily refund their money. Happily. Why would I want to take money for something I didn’t do? That’s just shitty. It’s dishonest.
But, here’s the truth. I’ve never heard of a therapist, psychologist, counselor, or anyone else in this field who does that. So, you’re left with not just uncertainty but also risk – financially, in particular. You’re very much at the mercy of the therapist’s abilities or lack thereof.
But, that’s not the question. The question was, What are worthy goals?
Transformation of your life, both internal and external. That’s always the goal.
Actual healing, not just incessant coping. Yes, learning coping skills is necessary for certain situations. But, coping is not healing. And, I happen to believe that pretty much anything can be healed…..again, if the client brings the courage to keep opening up.
If your therapist doesn’t push forever in that direction and if you feel you aren’t making progress in that direction, you gotta speak up and say you want more from them.
Or, you need to find a new therapist.
How frequently do I need to meet with a therapist, and how long will it take?
Transformation can be immediate,
If you go deep enough.
-Unknown
I am an absolute believer that therapy does not, NOT, NOT have to take forever. Can I heal someone fully and completely in one session? Nope. And I never claim I can.
But, if you go deep enough – if they are open to my taking them deep – they can experience massive transformation in weeks and be prepared to move forward without my aid in a few months.
Yes, healing of the soul, unleashing the authentic self and the new directions it brings, and feeling massively lighter and healed can happen in months. I tell potential clients all the time, do you want healing in a few years, or do you want it now? If you’re hungry to finally change and get it done, you’re motivated, and I want to work with you. If you’re largely unsure, I’m not the therapist for you.
Now, I work differently than most therapists.
Mandatory 10-page Autobiography
I require a 10-page (or less) autobiography from every client, at least one week before we ever meet.
I put in 2-3 hours studying that, marking it up with my notes, highlighting, and compiling the questions I want to come armed with. So, I’ve just made a 2-3 hour investment in a client, at no charge. I don’t know of any other therapist who does that.
Now, I charge a very high rate, even for the Manhattan/New York City area where I’m based. So, one could argue that I can afford to give all that free time to my clients. Fair point. Except rent in NYC for a therapist’s office can be $55/square foot or higher. But that’s not the point.
The autobiography requirement and my taking hours to study it has been something I have been doing for three decades, since back when I was charging $100/hour and even when I was counseling people for free. I do this because it enables us to hit the ground running. We’re not wasting 6-10 sessions learning story and background.
First Session: 4 Hours Minimum - 6 Hours Maximum
Secondly, all first sessions with all clients, unless I’m working with children, are 6 hours maximum and 4 hours minimum. And, most folks go with the 6-hour option, because they’re motivated to heal faster.
Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “SIX HOURS?! That’s insane! I can’t even sit still for six hours.” What clients discover, almost without exception, is that the four or six hours fly by extremely quickly.
Why? Because for the very first time in their lives, they’re going deep into their problems with someone who is helping them unearth truths and new insights they’ve never seen before. It’s powerful.
(Btw, follow-up sessions are a minimum of two hours and a maximum of four hours. Again, because I don’t believe in one-hour sessions.)
Why? To Accomplish More For You
Why do I do it? Because, for me personally in the work I do with clients, I know I can accomplish infinitely more in one 6-hour session than in six 1-hour sessions. I mean, how much does it suck to be in therapy and 50 minutes go by (does any therapist do a full hour, anymore?), and then those frustrating words ring from your psychologist’s mouth, “I’m afraid it’s time to stop.”
F—K THAT! I hate that. I hate that people have to go through that. I hate that insurance wrenches healing professions into working that way. And I hate that more therapists who don’t even take insurance aren’t giving longer sessions.
I’m just a huge believer in going long. And, some other professionals do extended sessions. (Though, I don’t know of any that do four and six-hour sessions.) You can just keep a client in the zone longer. Whereas, many people feel like they’re just starting to make progress and see things, when “Times up!” happens. In extended sessions, the client’s trust begins to grow quickly. Having done long sessions for decades, I also know that I can go longer than clients can, which means I can wear down their conditioned defenses and their fears.
Extended Sessions Imply Going Deeper for Therapy
Not a lot of therapists do extended sessions. If you can find one who does, I take that as a hopeful indicator. It’s a basic sign of someone who not only feels comfortable thinking outside the box but someone who likely knows how to take you deeper because they know that extra time is a valuable tool. One implies the other.
If you’re going with a more conventional therapist doing the 50-minute thing, you can still get results. You can. It’s just going to take longer. And, as with all therapy, it depends on the skills of the therapist and your willingness to open up to their lead.
Standard Therapy Frequency: Weekly
So then, how often should you meet with your therapist?
Well, the standard is once per week. I think if you’re motivated to get results sooner rather than later, once per week is the bare minimum unless your pocketbook does not allow that, which is a fair and reasonable consideration. But again, you can accelerate the velocity of your growth and transformation by how much work you do outside of the session.
And yes, a therapist who assigns homework is a huge plus. I always do and it’s always optional; for those who want to run faster.
Trust Your Own Inner Voice
While I recommend regular sessions, the most important thing is that clients begin to trust their own inner voice, to the degree that they can hear it yet. If they can’t trust and act on their voice with me – the very person teaching them to hear and act on it! – they sure as heck won’t be able to do it with someone else.
I had a client a decade, or so, ago, who was a mental health professional, himself. Before he darkened my door, he had been seeing his psychologist for 12 years, three times per week! I was shocked and angered, particularly when I heard what the issues were that he said he initially went for and later stayed for. He, too, realized that he had been stuck in a comfort zone of just discussing daily/weekly feelings and traumas, but was never pushed to go down to root causes and do the work of deep healing.
He had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that work. He even stated that during those 12 years, the person he most feared dying was not his wife, children, or parents, but his therapist! Yow!
We worked together for five months. He said to me after two months,
“Sven, you’ve done more in about 20 hours, than my previous psychologist did in 12 years!”
After five months, he was a completely changed man.
So, how long or how often should you be in therapy? As long as it takes.
And how frequently? How motivated are you and how much can you afford, is my response. And are you doing the work outside of the session?
Sven, I hate therapy because it gets so uncomfortable!
I don’t mean to be rude, but yeah, no shit! That’s kinda the point.
As mentioned previously, if you ain’t feeling discomfort in your therapist’s office, your therapist ain’t doing their job, or you’re resisting them, to the detriment of you making any progress.
I’ve seen sooooo many people walk away from therapy because they don’t want to touch the real issues. As I talk about in my book, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup, you’ve been running from that stuff your whole life. So, to finally turn and face it is fear-inducing. And, some people just can’t handle it, don’t want to touch it, or just aren’t ready. And, that’s okay. Nothin’ wrong with that. However, those issues ain’t going away just because you ain’t lookin’ at em. You can self-medicate all you want and engage in all manner of addictive actions, but it’s this stuff that you’re running from, and it ain’t going anywhere. It doesn’t just magically disappear.
>> See What Makes “There’s a Hole In My Love Cup” So Badass Effective?
I had a fella come to me, a while back. Came for about 3 sessions. At the end of the third, he said, “Sven, I gotta be honest with you. I’ve come to you now for 11 hours and I haven’t seen any change.”
I laughed and responded,
“That’s 100% true. But let’s be honest. You’ve come to me for 11 hours and you haven’t opened up, at all. You don’t want to touch the real shit. You’ve stayed locked down on the deaths of your mother and your 32-year-old brother when you were 29. You’ve got soooo much pain inside of you that you don’t want to touch, let alone grieve fully.”
“You’re full of shit! When my brother died, I cried all night. Then, in the morning, I went back to work. Whaddya mean, I haven’t grieved?”
I couldn’t resist; I laughed again.
“Dude, that’s not grieving. That’s a good cry, but that ain’t grief. Grieving the loss of your dear brother who was your best friend, and then grieving the loss of your beloved mother in the same year is a process that lasts literally years. And you can’t bear to touch it. You’re so terrified of that pain. And, I don’t blame you. It’s soul-crushing shit. But that’s the reason you’ve had x, y, and z addictions. You’ve been running from all of that pain. And, there’ll be no joy in Mudville ‘til you face that stuff. Zip. Zero.”
“Yeah, dude, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snorted.
“Well, I’m more than happy to refund your money,” I replied. And we went our separate ways.
The bottom line is that at some point in life, if you truly want to be happy, you gotta be willing to embrace the suck, as the young folk like to say. You gotta be willing to face the pain that you’ve been trying to escape that you just can’t shake. You gotta be willing to go into the discomfort.
You ready?
How will I know that therapy is helping me?
That’s an easy one, you start feeling better, not just a bit better at the end of a session, but cumulatively, overall.
If you are not experiencing a feeling of lightness, relief, and more energy, you’re not healing yet. The healing of the soul absolutely brings physical change. You will experience a change in the amount of energy you have.
Additionally, and in some ways even sweeter than the increased energy and lightness, you will grow in clarity.
Part of what drives people to therapy is feeling like their lives and brains are just awash in so many thoughts and feelings and never-ending worries and messages. It’s brain fog to the max. And, what happens in really good therapy is that the fog begins to, more and more, clear. I’ve had so many clients report that the best part is that finally see the truths of their past, the vividness of who they are today, and the obviousness of where they feel called to go with their lives. Clarity!
If your clarity is not increasing, you’re not progressing. Either you’re not doing your job or your therapist isn’t doing theirs.
It’s a bit of a statement of the obvious, but the whole point of therapy is to feel better, just as the whole thing that drove you to therapy was, in one way or another, that you feel awful inside.
So, if you ain’t feeling better, your therapy isn’t helping you.
How do I know when it’s time to stop? And how do I keep the momentum going?
I tell every single one of my clients,
“I’m happy to work with you as long as you feel the need. But, that said, my goal is to get you off my tit, as fast as possible, to get you to the point where you can stand on your own two feet, strong, and ready to attack the world, as quickly as possible.
Because I know you don’t want healing in three years. You want healing now.”
I know when it’s time to encourage the client to start looking at leaving the nest. I can feel it.
The major pain, fears, and BS beliefs they’ve been taught about themselves have been fully addressed and purged. Any work beyond that is stuff they can be doing on their own, in no small part because, by now, I have taught them tools and they’ve sufficiently practiced them, to heal themselves of new stuff that comes up.
Also, there are obvious changes in their energy, their speech patterns, their countenance and carriage, and how they talk about life and their problems. You can just feel the relief, the new enthusiasm, the increased calm, and the physical vigor coming off of them. These are the results of true transformation and soul healing.
So, if they feel ready, they take a few weeks or months to be on their own. We schedule a check-up/check-in for a month out or so. Then they come back and we address the issues from that foray into the bold new world they’ve begun to build.
It's time to stop when you feel a massive difference and you feel well-schooled in tools necessary to engage life’s issues on your own. I mean, isn’t that kinda the point?
And, of course, sometimes they come back and they’ve crashed. I get a frantic email stating they need to see me ASAP because they’re now lower than they ever felt before working with me. Once I get them into session, I explain that they feel lower now than before because they had been operating at a higher level after our work, thus making the fall back to their old state seem like a much greater fall. The pain feels far worse when you’ve known the high and the ‘new normal’ of healing.
Quite fascinatingly, every single time, the reason for the fall is the same: they stopped the disciplines.
>> See The Soul Disciplines and Keeping Your Spirit on Track
All those tools I taught them and they became good at employing in their daily/weekly life they aborted.
Or, those disciplines gradually trickled off.
And some of that old stuff or some new stuff came in and took them over.
It’s like the person who sees a trainer at the gym for a while and begins to see weight loss and increased strength and muscle tone but then strikes out on their own, only to soon trail off in the fitness disciplines. They end up gaining the weight right back.
Soul health ain’t once and for all. Yes, you can fully heal past pains. Absolutely. But the disciplines that keep that ‘love cup’ empty of crud and clean and filling with love are a never-ending lifestyle, just like saving money, prioritizing fitness, and deliberate parenting. It’s an ongoing thing, not a one-and-done.
What resources do you recommend so that therapy goes really well?
In my Love Cup book, I give a list of nine other books by other authors that are terrific resources for people who take self-care/self-help seriously, people who want to heal more, do more, and keep scouring that Love Cup of anything that might cause a drain on the clarity, lightness, enthusiasm, and calm they’ve come to know and love inside them.
There are plenty of other self-help resources out there. Just go where your natural curiosity takes you.
When I was on my own self-help journey’s most intense times, I used to go to the bookstore and sit for hours just reading whichever self-help books jumped out at me, or books from other sections that might offer new insights and challenges on my journey.
The exploration, itself, was part of the work/fun.
What questions do you wish clients asked before coming to you?
Hahaha. Honestly? I wish people would ask me,
“Will you please both love me and kick my ass?”
I think most people imply that when they come to me. And, that is certainly how I approach my work with every client. But, yeah, that’s fun when I hear that or some derivative of that.
I think what I want most from a new or potential client is not a question but just a willingness to open up to my lead, even if that openness is tentative. I’ll win their trust, further enhancing their willingness to open up. I need them to at least be willing to open up. And, again, that comes from courage, which itself is born of pain.
So, has your pain gotten bad enough, yet? Are you ready to finally open yourself to a therapist, trust the process, and do the work?
If so, it’s time to get after it.
Here’s a 20-minute video to give you a few more thoughts.
Have We Answered Your Questions About Therapy and Counseling?
If yes, do you feel differently about doing therapy?
If not, let us know what other questions you have in the comments.
Thanks for reading!
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-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement, After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.Com
