Therapy simply means ‘healing’; if there is an aspect of your life that needs healing, consider therapy.
Most things can be therapeutic if used in the right way, even eating chocolate. It doesn’t have to mean talking to someone (though social contact while eating chocolate is pretty good, unless you have to share the chocolate).
If you have something you’d like to heal, choose a therapy that suits you.
Of course, if you do that, you’ll first need to agree with yourself that something needs to be fixed – a behaviour, a relationship, a fear, a habit, even something with a clinical label. That’s a requirement for therapy to be effective.
Ready?
Here’s a therapy warm-up exercise:
- Start with the phrase “I agree that (X) needs healing”.
- Say it aloud to yourself a few times (preferably in private, or freedom to choose your therapy may be taken away from you).
- Do this several times throughout the day; you can also run it through your mind as a sort of mantra.
- On day two, take some quiet time to write the phrase, followed by the word ‘because’, then list the benefits (no ‘yes-buts’ or qualifiers. Short snappy phrases work best).
- Revisit your list for a couple of days, add to it as things occur to you.
- On day three go into ‘edit’ mode and simplify it by removing any fluff that obscures clarity; a three-year-old should be able to understand it (your unconscious mind thinks like a three-year-old).
- For the next three days read the list to yourself out loud, get to know it by heart if you can.
- On the seventh day, do nothing. If a therapeutic approach that’ll help hasn’t already occurred to you, something will start to emerge pretty soon. If it doesn’t, and (X) persists, get help.
