Typically, individual therapy is initiated when uncomfortable emotions have been triggered by a life event. The reason why people choose to enter therapy can vary for everyone.
Some common reasons that people engage in therapy include:
- Generalized anxiety
- Social anxiety
- Contention within a significant relationship
- Stress brought on by a professional complication
- Life feeling a little off balance
- Low self-esteem or feelings of inadequacy or depression. (Here we will define depression as experiencing the loss of interest in activities or relationships that were once associated with happiness and pleasure, and feelings of emptiness or loneliness that either can or cannot be explained by your current circumstances.)
The beginning of therapy is your opportunity to share with the therapist what your particular reason for seeking treatment is.
You will be able to explain your present conflict or conflicts as well as the events that have led up to them. This first session is also an opportunity to establish rapport with the therapist as well as determining if you think the therapist is a good fit for you.
Sometimes conflicts can be complex in nature. For example, let’s imagine that at this particular time in your life you are struggling with emotions related to a job loss. Clearly, the loss of your job and the various complications leading to it are a crisis that you are dealing with right now, in the present. Let’s also assume that the concerns you are having in response to losing your job are legitimate and even justified. However, in addition to the valid feelings you are experiencing, you might also recognize that some old and unwanted feelings have also shown up to pay you a visit . So now, you are not only dealing with an urgent professional problem and its associated feelings, your distress is being compounded by ‘ghosts of problems past.’
It is common for painful thoughts or feelings from our history to rear their ugly head when we are under duress.
With that being said, what was already a complicated and stressful situation has now become convoluted with painful parts of yourself that have never been adequately addressed or resolved. Therefore, your ability to respond objectively to your current problem can become compromised creating further despondency.
Working one on one with a therapist can help to address each component of your problem. You will have the opportunity to deal with the manifest content, which is the current problem that you are faced with and the feelings associated with it as well as the latent content, which speaks to emotional issues that lie beneath the surface of your awareness because they are too painful to deal with.