E253: Why I stopped going to therapy | Trauma Coach
In this episode, I talk about why I stopped going to therapy. Recently, someone asked me if I still go to therapy every week, and the answer is ‘NO.’ There's evolutions to this, all of this life, everything that we do.
See show notes at: https://www.thinkunbrokenpodcast.com/e253-why-i-stopped-going-to-therapy-trauma-coach/#show-notes
In this episode, I talk about why I stopped going to therapy. Recently, someone asked me if I still go to therapy every week, and the answer is ‘NO.’
There's evolutions to this, all of this life, everything that we do. As we evolve, you have to recognize that you probably will level up and level out of where you're at right now and who you're with today, and that applies to therapy, that applies to coaching.
Take a moment.
Contemplate.
Be Unbroken.
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Recently, someone asked me if I still go to therapy every week and the answer is ‘NO.’
What's up, Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well, wherever you are in the world today. We're excited to be back with you with another episode, before I jump in I just wanted to share some good news, awesome news actually. I just found out that the Think Unbroken Podcast ranked at number 42 of the top 100 self-help and Personal Improvement podcast on planet Earth. Amazing! I'm so excited about that, it's one of those things where you're like, I didn't know I could do that even though I'm like, let's go and do that, so we're trying to get to number 1. So thank you for that. Thank you for listening, thank you for subscribing, when you go in and you hit that five-star, you leave that review it means the world.
So do me a favor. If you haven't left a review, go and leave a review, hit that five star and I'm going to randomly select from the new reviews, someone's going to win a copy of my brand new book Unbroken Man, and I'm going to do that every single week until it comes out.
So if you want to get a copy for free, go leave a review, hit five stars or hit one star if you're like, fuck this show at stupid, leave one star, I'm totally okay with that because I want to know the truth.
That said, so someone asked me a question and they ask me, you know, do you still go to therapy every week? The answer is, no, I don't. And it's really kind of, like, I can let my shoulders down on them like, ah, I love that. I don't have to go to therapy every week anymore. I love it. And in fact, one of the awesome things about my journey, and I know this won't always hold true for everyone, but it did for me is I get to have my therapist on speed dial like I can hit this guy up whenever I want and be like, hey, I need to work through this thing I can't figure out about my past.And he'll hop on and it's phenomenal and it's super beneficial to me and in the beginning, it wasn't like that.
So if I rewind, I go back to call it a decade ago, give you a bit of time line here. When I go back about a decade ago, I was going to therapy about once a week and I was just starting to get comfortable with this idea about truth and vulnerability and all those things. And then when I left, Indiana and moved to Portland, I said, I'm going all-in and all in for me at that time and I mean, this in a literal sense I'm not joking was therapy, four times a week, on top of groups, on top of body work, on top of all these other things. And so I would go to my regular one-on-one therapy that was on Mondays, I would go to my group therapy, that was on Wednesdays that would those actually changed eventually, I would do EMDR whenever I could get in, or like Tuesday, afternoons, and I would do CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy on Fridays. And so, I was literally now looking, I recognize that most people that's overkill and even for me I'm like, that's overkill but I felt it necessary. I felt it in it because I was like, if I'm going to do this shit, I'm going fucking all in. I'm going all in on this. I'm gonna figure this out. I'm going to go and for a year, I did almost all four of those might well, excuse me EMDR because it's a session based thing I think I did 12 or 15 sessions like that and then it went down to just group one-on-one and CBT and then eventually it went down the group and one-on-one or see me then one down one on one only, and that was a progression over I think about three-year period.
And then when I got to one-on-one, it was me and my therapist every Wednesday night, 5:00 p.m. Portland Oregon, same office, same chair, same window, same mug, it's in there drinking the same fucking tea for years until what happened was I started realizing, it wasn't benefiting me anymore to be in there with that frequency, because there was so much other personal development happening, so much other work, so much growth, and I continually felt like, I would go In there and it's like we were rehashing these same old things and then I realized that was happening because I wasn't allowing myself to just put those things on a shelf and let go of them.
And when I started doing that and that was really the fascinating progression about healing was I started getting in this point where I would just put these things away and be like, oh we talked about it, I understand it. I have causation and correlation around it. I can create meaning, and I would just put it away. And the more I did that, the less I felt the need to have to go to therapy every week, and then, eventually it became every other week and then it became monthly. And it's amazing to be able to say that to be able to have the tools today, a decade removed from this journey more so now, to be able to make meaning of things on my own and process, and use and leverage all of these tools that I've got from all these amazing human beings over the years and because of that, now, when I go to therapy is pretty rare like so recently in the late, I guess, late winter, or I guess, is that early when it's early winter, December, January. I started going back to therapy with a little bit of regularity. There was something happening in my life, something that I'm going to keep private to myself at this moment, maybe I'll talk about it one day I haven't decided yet. And with this thing happening, I was like, oh, I need support here, I need to figure out causation correlation, I need to figure out meaning, I need to be able to assess this and put things where they go and then I started going getting back into it. And now I'm kind of out of it and, you know, now it's once a month and then it may go back to that speed dial thing. And that's kind of what I think is the really interesting facet of therapy, think far too often we get caught in it, like maybe not caught, that might be the wrong way to phrase it but we get in it in a way that it just becomes so normative that we just continue to go and leverage it and don't see a lot of change happen.
I think for me, personally, and I only speak for myself because I can't speak for anyone else. I got to the point where I felt like I had hit this wall with therapy and not in a bad way I'm glad I hit that wall because trust me with all the work, all the time, all the effort, all the money I was like, I'm done. I need a fucking break from this for a while and taking that break ended up being kind of this catalyst that made me think about, you know, traveling the world and living in all these countries and writing the first book and starting the podcast, and then in these interims that are something that happened, right? And I would go and I'd reach out and I say, hey can we have a session, I need this right now? And that's like to me, that's the greatest gift to not need it but have it when you do.
And today as I look at and I think about the future I think about this with coaching, too. There's evolutions to this, all of this life everything that we do and as we evolve you have to recognize that you probably are going to level up and level out of where you're at right now and who you're with today and that applies to therapy, that applies to coaching. You know, my favorite moment as a coach is when I have a client come and say, hey man, I'm good, I'm going to go try this on my own. The other side of it too is sometimes I'll say, hey, I think that you have all the tools that you need, it's time, it's time for you to go out; go out into the world a little grasshopper, right? Because I think that's a part of the journey to is you level up and there's somebody to serve you beyond me. Right? And I look about that in my coaches in my own life and in when it comes to therapy, I think about the same thing. Go, okay, cool. When I need it. Am I in the right place with the right person? And my level past this? Because to be honest guys, some of you are in therapy with a therapist that you've outgrown but you stay because of comfort. And to me I think of that as like being in a relationship that doesn't serve you and some point like, unfortunately this isn't always true I'm not trying to make a blanket statement. But at some point the therapist you should question this about yourself, is your therapist making your life better or are you doing this still because it so formulaic? And that was with one therapist that was an experience that I had and I was like, hey, I'm out, this isn't helping me. Right? And so you've got to be the arbitrator of your life, right? You've got to be the one who moves yourself forward.
And also maybe you don't need therapy every week, maybe it's every other week, maybe it's every third week, maybe it's once a month, maybe it's one's a quarter, right? There's so many different things and I know that there are people who are proponent of it for every week, and I certainly was at the beginning and I think if you're at the beginning of the journey, every week as ideal, maybe even a couple times a week, especially if you got some heavy shit, but I think as you go and as you progress in as you grow and as you heal, you may want to consider doing it less, you may want to consider living a little bit.
You know, I have clients come in and when I coach them, you know, I'll see it, I'll feel it, I'll hear it in their voice, there's a hesitancy, a residence of like I don't want to be here right now and I can pick up on it because I've fucking been there and I'll be like, hey, after this session, we're going to take a break. You're going to take three weeks away; I'm not going to coach you. I will literally kick people out for three weeks, but nope, go live your life. Go live your life.
Now, of course, if they need me and they messaged me like, oh shit, I'm having, of course, I'm gonna show up and we're going to take care of them. But ultimately, if they're in this place where so much of their life is under control in there feeling good, in there rocking. I have a couple clients, like I coach them once a month. I have one client, I think of, you know, I coach them once every quarter quarterly, every three months, we get together, it's on the calendar right now and then I have other clients where I coach them once a week or multiple times a week.
So it really just depends on where you are in your journey, but just ask yourself.
Do I need to do this every single week?
And for me as I've grown, I stopped going every week, it just didn't make sense and today, it doesn't.
If I hit another wall like I did in December, if I hit this moment, I'm going to pick up the phone like you can we go through this again? I need help. I need guidance. I need assistance.
So that said, Unbroken Nation. Take a moment. Contemplate.
Think about whether or not you even need to listen to the show tomorrow because there's going to be another one, you know there is or do you need to pick it up in a week? Do you need to come back in a month? Maybe in a quarter? I don't know. I don't know, but you should ask yourself.
Thank you so much for listening.
Please, like, subscribe, comment, share.
Tell a friend.
And Until Next Time.
My friends, Be Unbroken.
-I'll see you.
Michael Unbroken
Coach
Michael is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, speaker, coach, and advocate for adult survivors of childhood trauma.
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