Approaching Psychotherapy: These Are 7 Things You Need To Know

What is psychotherapy? These days, mental distress renders an individual’s mental and emotional capacity. There aren’t many alternatives than turning to this method.

Although psychotherapy is now widely practised worldwide, do we know what it is? And how can we understand the complexity of psychotherapy that might help us escape the darkness of mental distress?

Here are seven core elements you have to know about psychotherapy:

Every human is, in part, neurotic

• • Before that, what is neurosis?
  • Neurosis is any thinking or behavioural pattern that blocks the capability of our personalities and potential to flourish.
  • For instance, you can be neurotic in friendship, love, at work or in attitude to creativity or politics.
  • However, neuroticism should be a part of every evolved human’s mission.
  • It is to seek, understand and unpick the neurotic elements of their traits.
  • Therefore, if someone asks, “How are you neurotic?” it shouldn’t be regarded as insensitive. It’s a sensible and kind question to understand more about yourself.

Neuroses are originated from your childhood

• • Neuroses roots in your childhood. This is because you aren’t old enough to deploy an adult mechanism to process events.
  • What causes neuroses?
    • Incomprehensible, cruel and intolerable traumas.
  • Thus, a child couldn’t make sense of the agony they face yet. They suffer from the aftermaths of self and command of trust, intelligence and love.

Parental inadequacy heightens neurosis

• • These types of parents contribute to the rise of neurosis in a child
    • If the parent is over-controlling, the child will face autonomy problems.
    • Next, if the parents often belittle their children, they’ll have low self-esteem.
    • Other than that, if there’s sexual rivalry or seductiveness (Oedipus or Electra complex), there will be concerns of shame or guilt.
  • Hence, the negative side of a parent will impose its defect on a child.

An un-neurotic parent doesn’t exist

• • Parents should admit their mistakes instead of denying them.
  • Rather than blaming the child, parents should assist their kids for them to understand the difficulties they’re facing.

Trauma leads to repression

• • Trauma contributes to neurotic symptoms.
  • Furthermore, neuroses that aren’t understood become perpetuity.
  • And sadly, it doesn’t heal with time.

Self-awareness promotes healing

• • Repression needs to be discarded.
  • How to do so? You have to come to terms with your traumas and accept them as a part of your life.
  • Miraculously, self-knowledge in psychotherapy would be our saving grace.

Know and feel the past

• • You have to re-experience the past, physically and emotionally, instead of only intellectually.
  • By doing this, it can free you from its suffocating hold.
  • Neuroses will weaken and dissolve once the trauma is understood and felt.

Psychotherapy aims to understand the reason for your mental distress and find ways to help you resolve them. Therefore, it all navigates back to you: are you ready to accept, understand and feel them? 

Sources: Youtube The School of Life, Simply Psychology