Therapy: Your Questions Answered
Every time I mention therapy on my Instagram account, I get so many therapy related questions. Some of them are to do with what actually happens in couples’ therapy, some are about where to find a therapist and some are about how to get your partner to go to therapy. I really try to answer every question I get relating to this because I know that, if you’re asking, then chances are your looking for help so, I wanted to get as many of these questions answered as possible.*
Where possible, I’ve fact checked everything here but if an answer is opinion based then please understand that it’s just my opinion.
(*If you have a question that I haven’t answered here, drop me an email or message me on Instagram and I’ll update this with my answer).
Free therapy is available. For mental health related therapy you can access this through your GP who can refer you. This can take time and waiting lists are long - the NHS is under a great deal of stress in this particular area - but it’s worth getting into the system. Sometimes, it can come up a lot more quickly than you think.
In terms of accessing free therapy for couples, RELATE is a wonderful charity. Again, the wait can be significant depending on your area and you may find that your nearest RELATE centre is quite far away but if cost is a concern - and make no mistake, private therapy isn’t cheap - then this definitely worth exploring.
If you are interested in pursuing the private therapy option, a lot of people find a therapist through recommendation or word of mouth but, if that’s not the case for you (as it wasn't for us) then there are sites that can help you find a local therapist. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy is a great place to start. You can search by need and location and find the right therapist for you. Therapists can specialise in working with certain issues. Make sure your therapist has experience of treating what you need whether that’s couples therapy, addiction, depression, anxiety. I had a short chat with our therapist on the phone when I first contacted her and then she offered a consultation session. After that, we decided it was a good fit and continued the sessions.
Costs for therapy can vary wildly depending on a number of factors. As we are in London, but not central London, we pay £90 a session. This has at times been a huge burden financially on us, especially when we were in therapy every week and, at times, we’ve had to pause therapy because it was simply untenable for us to spend that much money every week on top of our normal outgoings. There are definitely therapists that our less expensive and one that are much more expensive. I would say that price is just one factor to consider - if you feel that your therapist is a good fit and works for you then that’s the most important thing. Just because you’re not spending £200 a session doesn’t mean your therapist is less effective. Costs relate to a number of factors - not least their overheads. So if your therapist has a fancy office in an expensive area, chances are your paying for his/her rent rather than their expertise. It’s such a subjective relationship that more expensive definitely doesn’t mean better.
Pretty much whatever needs to happen in a couples’ therapy session. In your first session, your therapist will want to know what led you to her office. You therapist will give you both time to speak and she’ll tell you a little bit about how he/she works and explain the process to you.
We’ve had therapy sessions where there has been screaming, shouting, tears, anger, laughter, silence and everything in between. Therapy is a safe space, there’s a mediator who’s there to interpret your anger, your resentment, your fears into rational conversations that actually get you somewhere. If you’re anything like me, you’ll exhibit the worst kind of behaviour when you’re fighting with the person you love the most - therapy forces you to approach it with somewhat more maturity because, frankly, I’d never act like that in public!
Sessions aren’t about fixing your relationship - so I would approach this knowing that it may take a while, that one session won’t fix it. Therapy is about guiding you through the process, the conversations that you need to experience so that you can come out the other side. There have been some sessions that have been so hard and painful that we’ve left and not spoken to each other until the next session because it was too dangerous for us to continue the conversation without the help of a therapist, but that’s what we needed to do.
A therapist isn’t an adjudicator. They’re not there to hear both sides of the story and tell you who is right. You can’t ‘win’ at therapy. Everybody’s feelings are valid and will be given space and that’s what the therapist will do: create an environment where you can really start to listen to everything that’s being said by your partner and they’ll help translate it so that it makes sense to you.
If you don’t like your therapist, find a new one. It’s not personal but if therapy is going to work you have to fit with your therapist. You have to feel a connection because if you feel like they don’t hear you, or don’t speak your ‘language’ and seem to be translating things inaccurately, or if for any reason you feel that your partner bonds more with the therapist than you do, then its important that you find one you both like. If you’re in couples’ therapy, there’s probably enough resentment in your life already without feeling left out of the relationship between your partner and your therapist. It’s ok to say it’s not working, it’s ok to try another one and it’s ok to move on until you find the right one.
A word of caution though: try to be really honest with yourself if you think you don’t like your therapist. It may well be that it’s just not the right fit, but it could also be that they’re challenging you, making you feel uncomfortable, forcing you to confront parts of yourself that you don’t like. I hate to say it but this is all part of therapy because no matter how much you resent and hate your partner, he/she probably feels the same way about you so you are going to have to confront those feelings, recognise them and accept them. It’s easy for us to focus on all the shit that they do wrong but we have to accept our own. A good therapist will be able to tell when it’s not a good fit or if it’s a case of you feeling uncomfortable with a difficult process, but try to be aware before just jumping ship.
This is hands down the question I get asked the most. My following is almost entirely women and every question I have had has been from women saying that their husband won’t go to therapy and is there anything they can do? I think it can be really hard for some men to want to go to therapy. It pushes a lot of buttons around admitting to failure, needing to ask for help, and shame and I understand that. I was very lucky; Jimmy was very willing to go to therapy but if he hadn’t been I think I would have said something along these lines.
“We are in a shit place. The shittest place we’ve ever been. We’ve been heading here for a while and it’s been miserable for both of us. I hate you when you walk in the room, I resent everything about you and I know you feel the same way. We are so angry - even when we’re not angry, it’s there simmering below the surface. We don’t have sex. I’m exhausted, I’m tired, I’m sad BUT, despite all of that, I still, in an ideal world want to grow old with you. I chose you because I knew you were my person and somewhere along the way we’ve both taken our eye of the ball and fucked it up and I honestly don’t know if we can fix it. But I know I want to try and I know, if it doesn’t work out, I want to be able to look our kids in the eye and tell them we did EVERYTHING we could to fix it…and to know I’m not lying to them.”
That’s just what I would say.
Therapy doesn’t work - YOU work. You work really, really hard. The therapist doesn’t fix it. You fix it. The therapist just keeps you safe while you do it, translates the ‘I hate yous’ into the ‘I feel hurts’. The therapist stops you laying the blame at your partner’s door waiting for him/her to pick it up and beat himself with it, and throws all that blame into the middle of the room and unpicks it bit by bit discovering the whys rather than focussing on the whats. I can credit the survival of my marriage to therapy but I know that we did the hard work. We learned when to speak and when to shut the fuck up. We listened and we really heard what was being said and yes, that’s because the therapist translated it all for us, but we had to want to do it. We had to want to have the hard conversations, the painful talks. We had to both admit we were wrong, that we were hurt but that we’d also inflicted hurt and because we were both willing to own our bad behaviour and sit uncomfortably vulnerable together while we worked through this mess, it actually bonded us. I knew how painful it was to admit my part in it and I could empathise with my husband on that level too. Therapy is hard and it’s ugly and painful but it’s the best tool we had when it came to us rebuilding our relationship.