Healing through Relationships: Why the Therapeutic Relationship Matters
There’s a lot of mental health advice on the internet right now.
Take this blog for example! Our blog is full of resources, thought exercises and tips meant to help support you in your journey to better mental health. But are the blogs themselves therapy? Are the social media posts describing different mindfulness exercises to try for your anxiety the same thing as therapy?
Short answer: nope!
Long answer: therapy is so much more than the tools you learn. Therapy is comprehensive mental health care, where the relationship between therapist and client is a crucial component to the treatment and healing process.
While there are lots of differences between the tools a therapist or therapy practice may provide online and the actual mental health services they offer, the part we’re going to focus on today is a part that is often overlooked: how the therapeutic relationship itself is crucial to healing.
That’s part of why you can’t get the same experience reading a therapists blog as you would seeing that therapist in person–while they can provide you helpful tools to practice on your own, you’re missing the practice of showing up in relation to someone and writing new social scripts based on how they’re able to hold space for you.
Okay….what does that all mean?
Let’s go back to our example from a few weeks ago about talking to your therapist about when they’ve hurt your feelings.
The social script you’re working from might make telling someone they’ve hurt your feelings a scary, anxiety provoking conversation. Maybe you were yelled at as a child when you got upset or expressed your feelings. Maybe you’ve never been in a relationship where someone apologized after hurting your feelings. Or maybe you’ve never been in a relationship where you were safe to express that your feelings were hurt at all.
In therapy, you get to practice showing up and telling someone they hurt your feelings.
While it’s not quite practice practice–you’re still communicating your real feelings and it was based out of a real situation, not just a theoretical scenario–you’re still given the assurance that you’re in a safe space where you won’t be punished for expressing how you’re feeling. That makes it an easier stepping stone to use to practice expressing those feelings because you have that safety net of knowing therapy is the space where you’re supposed to come in and discuss your feelings.
This sort of relational healing is a crucial component to good therapy–and it doesn’t just come up in the moments where you need to manage conflict with your therapist!
You’re also engaging in relational healing in therapy when:
You express something you feel shame about and instead of responding with anger, repulsion, or what you fear they will respond with, your therapist responds with curiosity and compassion
You come to therapy frustrated with how something is going, and you find support in collaborating with your therapist to figure out what to do next, rather than managing it all on your own
These are two other simple and common examples of how the relationship between therapist and client is an essential part of the therapeutic process! That’s also why it’s so important to be sure you have a safe and trustworthy relationship with your therapist.
If you’re looking for support in the process of finding a therapist, contact us and we can help personally match you to a therapist based on your needs.
Starting therapy can be overwhelming. How do you know therapy will be helpful? How do you find a therapist that’s right for you? What should you prepare for, in your first session? How much of therapy takes place in therapy, and how much work will you have to do outside of your one on one time? These are common questions, and we want to help you feel informed and prepared.