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When You Come To Therapy With 'Nothing To Talk About'
When You Come To Therapy With 'Nothing To Talk About'
to Talk About’
September 15, 2016 • By Justin Lioi, MSW, LCSW, GoodTherapy.org Topic Expert
Contributor
Often the person is weirded out. Concerned, even. The person will tell me how they
usually have one, two, seven, eight things they really want to talk about and just
don’t know what to make of not having something ready to go.
Therapists are trained to help people talk about and process these things. And often,
once people start, they keep right on going! We all hold a lot of stuff in, and
sometimes we don’t even realize what’s in that backlog until we finally open up.
So the door opens, the person speaks and … here’s something interesting: things
may seem a little worse at first. When you’ve been very intentionally not looking at
distressing stuff for a long time, it’s bound to bring up some difficult feelings once
you start exploring.
But eventually, with some work, compassion, and patience, there’s generally some
relief.
And after a while, the person isn’t itching to get to their therapy session so they can
unpack, say, that incident at work or the uncomfortable time with the in-laws.
They had an okay week. Maybe even a good one. Maybe not great, but … they have
“nothing to talk about.”
Therapy is done in layers, but Therapy is done in layers, but unlike an onion, we don’t
unlike an onion, we don’t
simply peel off and discard simply peel off and discard layers once we look at them.
layers once we look at them.
We take a layer, examine it, put it back, take another
layer, leave it for later, skip a layer to see something else,
then go back to the second layer and reexamine it with what we know now. Maybe
along the way you fall back into an old habit (remember, the layers don’t disappear)
and we spend some time just holding all the layers without processing or questioning
them.
Entering therapy with much to talk about—that’s the top layer, or maybe even the
second or third. Sometimes that top layer—what we sometimes refer to in therapy
circles as the “presenting problem”—has been getting all the attention for so long
because it’s the loudest or most painful. When that’s peeled back for a moment,
when it has received some attention, we need to take some time to see what else
may be exposed. These may be quieter parts of you but are no less important or
meaningful.
We all have stuff like this inside us. If the “fires” we seek therapy for are turned down
a bit, even if just for the moment, then what seems insubstantial can be given more
attention. It might not be so insubstantial after all. We just need to allow for the
space, maybe even the silence, to give it permission to be heard.
Once you get over your surprise at not having anything “pressing” to say in therapy,
don’t be afraid to say whatever you’re thinking or feeling, no matter how
inconsequential it may seem. What might seem like little thoughts or feelings can
lead to big breakthroughs, too.
The preceding article was solely written by the author named above. Any views and
opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or
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