What Even Is Psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy is a scary word. Psychotherapy is a secret word. Psychotherapy is a confusing word. Psychotherapy is a word of hope.

A lot of the time we are scared to reach out for help. Experiencing social, mental, or emotional health issues is hard enough, and asking for help makes psychotherapy a scary word. It is okay to be scared. Often, we think that psychotherapy is coming into an office to talk to a stranger about all the awful things in your life, that sounds way too much, even if we know that we need help. Psychotherapy can also be scary because we talk about the traumatic events that have been affecting us. Just know the first phone call is the toughest,it gets easier.

Often, we don’t want people to know we are going for “therapy” because we are embarrassed that we couldn’t keep up with life, or that we are worried about not being seen as strong or capable. But sometimes the strongest thing we can do is ask for help. Psychotherapy is a confidential service, no one needs to know.

Psychotherapy is confusing. There are so many different therapists, therapies, terms, and how do we even know where to start looking or narrowing down who is going to work for you? Figuring out what works is something that we can do together. You’re not expected to know what any of that means.

Basically, psychotherapy is a space for you to talk until you don’t. It can be a place for you to create, paint, sculpt, write, draw, or any other thing as a way of expressing what you’ve been bottling up. It is a place for uS to get you through your challenges, re-invest in you, in your likes, your wants, and your needs. We can learn skills to be able to cope better, work on processing the past and understanding the past so it does not have to hurt you as much now. Honestly, sometimes psychotherapy is scary, hard, confusing, and uncomfortable. But it is filled with the hope (and the science) that this will get better, and you won’t feel so heavy all the time.

Psychotherapy is a process; and that process takes a different amount of time for every person and every problem. If you’re scared, worried, or confused about the process Lee-Ann and I are more than happy to be able to answer your questions, or talk to you about what to expect because we do not expect you to know what questions to ask.

It is why we do consultations.

Alysha Plaggemeier

Psychotherapist