Taking the Plunge

Asking For Help

Starting therapy can feel a bit like this!

We humans are a tribal bunch, we need each other in life, for so many of our needs. To get help around the house, get work projects completed, to teach our kids, to check our health, to shop for groceries. For pretty much everything! We also need each other for our needs of connection, intimacy, love, conversation, and validation too, but somehow these needs are difficult to express, and much harder to ask for help with than finding out which aisle the nutmeg is in.

I believe it’s because they’re vulnerable needs, they say more about us than we’re comfortable showing the world most of the time, but the longer we leave them, the harder it gets. At some point we realise we really need to reach out and ask for help with something we’ve tried to take care of on our own for a long time. We know that once this need is met, we’ll feel so much better, but still, the thought of asking a fellow human to help meet this basic human need brings up all these feelings. Feelings of failure, incompetence, inferiority. Fears of rejection, humiliation, embarrassment, disappointment…

So, our comfort zone can become a lonely place, familiar, but lonely. Sure, there’s people around, at work, at home, out and about, even friends and family to chat with. There’s eye contact and smiles with strangers, or small talk here and there. But the craving still lives in us, to share in a way that the other really gets us, to be reassured that what pains us, what we yearn for or what we grieve is ok, is human, is shared amongst us all, that we’re not alone in our internal landscape.

First sessions… '“Where do I begin?”

Sometimes, when we finally reach out and call a friend, or a therapist, get our butt on the seat and start the process, the dam wall bursts. Everything we’ve been feeling for so long can finally come out, and out it all comes, the tears flow before we manage to get through the first sentence, or word. Our heart feels as if it’s cracking open and we’ve no idea how we’ll make sense to anyone, where do we even begin? But we’ve started now, so we keep talking, and somehow find our way back onto a track that sounds like the beginning of a story, or the middle or the end, but it’s enough to go on, and off we go.

More of my clients start their first session like this than I ever thought would. Sometimes we have to get to crisis point before we take the plunge and get ourselves onto that therapist’s couch to find our way back to wellbeing, to thriving, to inspired and aligned. We don’t have to. We can make that choice to reach out when we first notice the need to be heard in a way that not all friends or family can. A good therapist is present with a non-bias, compassionate, curious, and validating kind of listening that really hits the spot. They can also help you unpack the layers that have somehow stacked up to get to the grass roots of your internal landscape.

Counselling to unpack your emotions and internal landscape.

If you’re looking for a safe space to share what’s on your heart, or unpack the complexities of being human, talk therapy could be just the thing you’re after.

www.nourishcounselling.com.au | daniellepassmore@gmail.com