The Value of Patience and Self-Empathy in Therapy

By Darius Cikanavicius

Many of those who start therapy know or soon realize that it’s a long, slow, and difficult process. Even knowing that, people still sometimes feel frustrated. This is understandable: we all want for our problems to end as soon as possible, especially if those problems are so heavy, blurry, draining, and have been present for decades.

Therapeutic Expectations and Challenges

A unique thing about therapy is that there is no clear end point. To a degree, self-work involves healing from trauma, growing, and maintaining your mental health, and your well-being in general. And this, naturally, last all our lives. Self-work is an ongoing process.

However, therapy can—and need to—have goals. In my work with clients, in the first session I ask what their expectations are and how they will know that we have made progress, so that the person would have some sort of point of reference, even if it’s very broad.

It is interesting to note that a person’s expectations sometimes are a part of the problem they are in therapy for. It is common that people, especially those with perfectionistic tendencies and chronic sense of overwhelming responsibility, feel that they have to fix themselves here and now. They also feel that having problems make them unworthy of love and acceptance, and that it may result in rejection or abandonment from people around them. So the urgency is burning.

But therapeutic progress, while sometimes rapid and empowering in some regards, can be slow and exhausting. Moreover, it often involves a lot of repetition. Healing and growth happens in a spiral: you encounter the same thoughts, emotions, behaviours, and situations, but over time all of it becomes a little bit better. It’s not an on-or-off switch: I have a problem or I don’t.

However, many people often do believe that it’s indeed all or nothing. In order to feel okay, they have to have all their problems resolved, and if it’s anything but that, then it’s not enough and is the same as failure, which, in their mind, will result in them being bad, unlovable, and hurt by others for it. They also have problems celebrating their therapeutic accomplishments, because there are always problems to work on, and therefore there is no time nor value to stop and celebrate their progress.

Therapy does oftentimes include talking about the same things over and over again. Some people even feel ashamed to bring up the same issue because they think they should be “over it” already since they talked about it already.

The Value of Patience and Empathy

Understanding the process and accepting where you are in it is vital in feeling content with your therapeutic status. It is normal that you can’t overcome the problem that have lasted for decades in a few weeks or months. It is normal that you need to think and talk about the same issue again, until you don’t.

It is helpful, even necessary, to be patient and empathetic with yourself. For many, this is the opposite from the treatment they received growing up so they are not used to it. This is where having a caring, competent therapist can help a lot. You need to learn to self-relate with kindness, patience, and empathy, not with self-attack and impatience. The former is a part of the solution, the latter is a part of the problem. Instead of self-attacking, learn self-connection.

What also doesn’t help is comparing yourself with others. Many feel that they “should” be somewhere else on their path than they are, because somebody else is seemingly doing better. There are a few problems with this mindset. First, oftentimes people are really bad at evaluating others people’s level of healthiness and resolvedness, for a myriad of reasons that I won’t get into here. Second, there will always be people who are doing better than you, just like there are always those who are doing worse than you. This in no way changes your problems. Third, instead of thinking about others and feeling bad about yourself, you could think what you can do to improve your situation, or at least think about why you’re thinking what you’re thinking now.

In my work with clients, we regularly reflect on the work we’ve done, so that the person could see the progress they have made. They always feel better after realizing how far they have gone already. It can be easily missed or overshadowed by all the unresolved, never-ending problems and challenges waiting ahead. Furthermore, a lot of people tend to dismiss or minimize their achievements. However, when they really examine them, they quickly notice that they have made a lot of progress.

Summary and Final Thoughts

Self-work and therapy can indeed by challenging and long-lasting. However, it’s important to see it realistically, to accept where you are in it, and to learn to relate to yourself in a loving, empathetic, and patient way. It also helps to occasionally remind and reassure yourself that you are going in the right direction. A good, caring therapist can always make your journey less foggy, less lonely, and more bearable—but at the end, it is your journey.

Support my work by becoming a Patreon subscriber for $5/mo or more and get access to bonus articles. And check out my book Human Development and Trauma: How Childhood Shapes Us into Who We Are as Adults. Thanks!

Comments

Post a Comment

MOST POPULAR POSTS

Character Assassination—and How to Handle It

By Darius Cikanavicius
Image
Those of us who have encountered people with narcissistic, predatory, or even sociopathic tendencies (for the sake of simplicity referred to as manipulator ) have experienced a phenomenon where the manipulator tries to vilify you by using triangulation , gossiping, power play, mischaracterization, and other tactics. It usually goes like this....  The Mechanism Behind It The manipulator is driven by shame, insecurity, and fear. As soon as they start feeling inferior, or as soon as you notice the manipulator's toxicity—or as soon as they notice you noticing their toxicity—they begin feeling deep insecurity. In their attempt to manage it, they may try to cover their tracks and save their image by giving you made up explanations and excuses, instead of recognizing their unhealthiness and working on themselves to overcome it. If you are able to see though their smoke and mirrors tactics, ideally you will either set a firm boundary and distance yourself from them or they wi...
Read more

Empathy And Laughing At Others’ Misery

By Darius Cikanavicius
Image
A lot of people lack empathy and don’t understand the connection between one’s past and one’s present. Based on the world we live in, I don’t think it’s an outrageous statement to make. Most people lack empathy for themselves, therefore they are unconscious of their own emotions and motives – and by extension they can’t empathize with others. I often hear people say, “Oh, he’s just this weird smelly man.” Or, “He was such a good boy when he was little, and now he’s so mean, I don’t know what happened!“ Or, “She’s just a dumb, filthy whore, how pathetic.” Or, “Haha, he’s so stupid! How could he do this kind of stuff, that‘s retarded.” And so on... Every person was a child once. However, a lot of people fail to understand that. Since they haven’t processed their own past, they see others as they are right now – and that’s it. They can’t comprehend that this person was a child once, and a lot of things happened before (s)he became a person that they are today. They didn’t just fall fr...
Read more

8 Reasons Why People Deny Childhood Trauma and Its Results

By Darius Cikanavicius
Image
Why do people think they had a good, normal childhood, or deny childhood trauma and its results altogether? I often hear people say things like: My childhood was normal.  Yes, there were some good things and some bad things – but that's life. My mother got sad, distant, or angry when I didn't perform well or acted badly, and my father sometimes hit me with a belt – but it was for my own good. All of this helped me to become a better person – and I'm thankful for it.  Yes, sometimes I feel depressed, very lonely, or empty – but we all feel like that.  My parents were strict, but they loved me and I turned out fine.  Yes, some people experienced a lot of abuse growing up, but I was never traumatized, and I don't have any inner wounds. I look at people, and I can very easily see the symptoms of childhood trauma. I see children being abused, and I see grownups with numerous inner wounds that resulted from being traumatized. It’s obvious to me. I see c...
Read more