I spoke with someone today who was on the fence about working with me. And you know, if you are on the fence, if you aren’t sure you’re ready to move forward, then you are probably still in pre-contemplation, which means you probably aren’t ready to take action. I am a direct person, and I will be candid with you and tell you that. To be perfectly honest, people who are not sure if they are ready to heal and get unstuck and open up their possibilities are not the people I want to work with. Because if you aren’t really ready to get into the trenches and work this, then we are both wasting our precious time. But if you ARE sure, if you ARE ready, if you’ve just had enough of being stuck where you are, then I will be your most staunch supporter, in your corner and advocating for you all the way with everything I’ve got — all of my considerable knowledge, wisdom, experience, and passion.
And it may not be easy. It’s not easy to figure out where you need to make changes in your life to get to where you want to be. And it could be intense; looking at past trauma and how it continues to play out in your life today is often intense. But I promise you, the work we do together will be effective. And it might even be fun sometimes. It will definitely be rewarding.
But you have to commit to it, to giving it a certain amount of time and effort. Don’t expect that one or two hours with a counselor like me is going to “cure” you. During the first few sessions, it may seem like there is not much movement at all. But that is the place we are gathering the fuel to take off. After all, it took you a lifetime to get where you are now; there is no reason to think that truly healing those wounds (thereby creating the change you are seeking) will only take a few sessions.
And opening old wounds can be painful. Because of this, you may initially feel worse and not better. Because of this, you may conclude that this kind of therapy isn’t working for you. But this is just the point where you need to stay with it, because (to continue with the wound analogy) a wound that is only superficially healed can fester and cause problems in the future. (You know this; that is how you got to where you are in the first place.) You have to allow time and therapy to help you re-open and properly clean that festering wound so it can heal from the inside out.
For this reason, I will usually ask you to commit to several sessions. It is not unreasonable to expect that it will take about 3 months of weekly sessions to be able to track progress and realize forward movement. You owe yourself that time, that commitment, at the very least. When you think about that, it’s only 90 days, and the actual sessions with me in those 90 days are only 12 hours out of your life. And I’ll be with you all the way — because once you commit to yourself and show me that you’re serious about healing, I will also be fully committed to you and do everything in my power to collaborate with you to help you reach your goals and get you to where you want to be.
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