Often, when we first come to therapy, we feel lost. We cannot really make sense of what is happening – perhaps why our bodies consistently alarm us, or why we are constantly feeling tense, overwhelmed and disconnected from the world despite our best efforts to feel better.
There can seem to be no firm ground, no sense of direction. It may feel like we do not understand our inner landscape; and so, we feel lost. Therapy can be the place in which we find ourselves. Where we learn how to recognise and navigate our inner landscape.
It does this by firstly asking, what is it like to be me? Therapy invites you to notice moment-by-moment: what am I feeling? How does my body feel? When do I feel this way or that way? With whom do I feel good and with whom not so good? The more we become attuned to and trust our own experiencing, the more we can use this as a guide to begin exploring our inner landscape.
Second, in therapy we explore what these feelings and sensations ultimately mean. For example: when I spend time with this person, I always feel tense and exhausted. Why is this? What might be unspoken between us? How important is this relationship to me and how could address my feelings with them, should I want to?
And finally, therapy provides the held and contained space to go down different paths and to discover what works and what doesn’t. It gives us the opportunity to try something new and to succeed or fail. This way, using our experiencing and our understanding of our experiencing as a guide, we start tracing the contours of our inner landscape. Over time, our understanding of this landscape becomes broader and clearer, and we become more confident and astute in navigating it. And so, in therapy, we can slowly find ourselves.
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