What To Expect From Your First Therapy Session

Although going to therapy is becoming more common and less stigmatized, it can still feel scary if you want to start therapy but don’t know what to expect. You might hear people talking about how their therapist delved into their childhood trauma or called them out on dysfunctional patterns in their daily life, and wonder if therapy is right for you. 

There’s No Sugarcoating it - Therapy Can Feel Uncomfortable. 

Let’s be honest, you don’t go to therapy to be comfortable - you go because you want to change something about your life. And often change feels uncomfortable because it involves doing something different or new. Talking to most people about our deepest vulnerabilities is uncomfortable - we are putting ourselves out there in hopes that we will be heard and understood. So, while it’s helpful that you don’t know the therapist personally, it can also be very vulnerable to talk to someone you just met about deep life struggles. It’s okay if at first, it feels weird and uncomfortable.

It can be especially difficult to talk about deeper struggles when that’s not something you’re used to doing. Therapy sometimes can feel like putting your life or vulnerabilities under a microscope and it’s important to do so when you’re hoping to create change. Vulnerabilities are things we often hide from others or don’t like them to see so it makes sense that it would feel uncomfortable to shine light on them. 

With all of this in mind, a therapist’s job is to be empathetic and to help you feel heard and understood. So while there may be discomfort, the therapist’s goal is to make the therapeutic space feel as comforting as possible.  There is a difference between feeling the discomfort of stretching vulnerable muscles or thoughtfully addressing past trauma, and not feeling comfortable with your therapist’s approach or presence. It’s ok to honor and explore the discomfort. 

So What Do You Talk About in an Initial Therapy Session?

Primarily a therapist will want to get to know you and your environment. In an initial session, they will want to get a general sense of what your life looks like - family, social support, relationships, job, living situation, etc. All of these factors can contribute to the struggles and stressors you face, so it’s important for them to note the aspects of life that cause you stress and the aspects that you are satisfied with. Some therapists might also want to get a sense of your upbringing. Understanding your family situation and the way you were raised helps us to get a bigger picture of who you are and the life circumstances that contribute to where you’re at now.

A therapist will also want to know what you’re hoping to work on in therapy. It helps if you have a sense of what you’re hoping to change or work on to help give the therapist an overview of your goals. More often than not, your past and current life circumstances will play a role in the improvements you’re hoping to make while in therapy. Talking about all of these things with your therapist helps them get on the same page with you about the progress you’re hoping to make.

You’re in the Driver’s Seat

Research tells us that the number one predictor of successful services is the relationship that you have with the therapist - it’s important that you feel heard and understood. If there is something that you don’t feel comfortable talking about, you can communicate that to the therapist and give them feedback about what feels like it is or isn’t working. A therapy session is your space and time, so while the therapist is there to guide and help you understand your experiences, you can talk about whatever feels important. 

Find the Right Therapist for You

All therapists are different and your experience can vary from one therapist to the next. If you are sensing that the therapist doesn’t feel like a good fit, it’s okay to end services and try a new one. Not every therapist will be the therapist for you and it’s important that you find one that is.

Our Downtown Denver-based therapists at Colorado Therapy Collective know it can be scary to start therapy for the first time and think it’s important to meet your therapist before starting services. We offer a complimentary 20-minute consultation with one of our therapists so you can get a feel for the therapist before committing to an initial session. Find more information about our therapists here. To get in touch with one of our therapists, call 720-204-8589 or submit a form on our website. If you’re ready to schedule a consultation or initial session, you can do so now by clicking here.

5 Steps to Improve Emotional Regulation

Do you ever find yourself getting really upset and having a hard time calming down? Maybe something went wrong at work - a co-worker threw you under the bus or your efforts went unrecognized by your boss. Maybe you feel stressed out, overwhelmed, and it feels impossible to bring yourself back to a calm state. Maybe you and your partner often find yourselves in conflict and your emotions go from zero to a hundred in a matter of seconds.

All of these situations can trigger your mind and body to go into survival mode - your heart rate increases, your thoughts are racing, and you feel a nervous energy that you don’t know how to soothe. When we feel stressed out or overwhelmed by any emotion, our body reacts, causing those physiological symptoms - signals that we feel threatened by our environment. Emotion regulation skills can help bring the reasoning part of your brain back online and help you negotiate with the part of your brain that’s saying “Danger! Danger! You’re not safe!”.

What is Emotion Regulation & Why is it Important?

Emotion regulation is exactly what it sounds like - a strategy to soothe emotions when it feels like we no longer have control over them. Emotion regulation requires an awareness of your feelings in the present moment. It’s important to be able to identify what is physiologically happening in your body as a result of a stimulus. If you notice a tightness in your throat or stomach and increased heart rate and breathing, you might be able to identify that feeling as anxiety. Emotions can feel physiologically different for everyone, but it’s important that you are able to connect what you notice physically to what you feel emotionally. We have to be able to understand our emotions in order to communicate them to others or even to make sense of them ourselves.

Aside from providing immediate emotional relief, emotion regulation also helps in the long term. Research shows that emotion regulation helps improve overall well-being including general levels of stress, our performance at work, and the way we show up in interpersonal relationships. 

It makes sense, right?

The better we are at soothing strong emotional reactions, the more present and level-headed we can show up in life.

Let’s say you asked your partner to unload the dishwasher and they didn’t do it - your reaction is to get really frustrated and say “Ugh, of course you didn’t listen to me! Do you even care?”. This may cause your partner to respond in defense, sparking an emotionally heated argument that becomes far greater than the fact that the dishes did not get put away. The way we react to others matters. Without recognizing it, our initial reaction to something could trigger our partner, friend, or co-worker to have an emotional reaction in response. When we work on our immediate emotional reaction to a trigger, we can change the way we send our emotional messages to others. This is why emotion regulation is so important - having awareness and control over the way our emotions come out in our actions can lead to improvements in communication and interpersonal relationships.

How Does Emotional Regulation Work?

The best way to practice emotion regulation is to practice being with yourself in the present moment, noticing any thoughts or feelings that come up, and being able to accept & soothe them. Here are 5 steps that will help improve your ability to regulate your emotions:

1. Identify your Triggers

Take a step back and try to notice the moments that you feel overwhelmed with stress or frustration. What happened the moment before those feelings came up? Did someone say or do something that was upsetting to you? Did unexpected plans get thrown into your day? See if you can be as specific as possible in identifying triggers - for example, it’s not just that your partner asked you to take out the trash, it’s the tone of their voice or the look on their face when they do it. 

Reflect on these questions, and be as specific as possible:

• When have I noticed I’ve gotten the most frustrated in the past week?

• What are some things that make me feel stressed out?

• When have I noticed I’ve gone from calm one second to frustrated the next?

Usually, you can find triggers in many aspects of your life. In your relationship, it could look like the previous dishwasher example or times when it doesn’t feel like your partner is available when you need support. Maybe at work, stress shows up when tasks start to pile up and you feel like you have to complete everything by the end of the day.

2. Notice Physical Sensations

When you feel overwhelmed by all the tasks that need to be done at work, what do you notice happens to your body? Use your body as a tool to understand what you’re feeling. Let’s practice right now - stop, close your eyes, and take a deep breath. Notice any parts of your body that feel tense, in pain, or under pressure. Notice the ways that your body is holding the feeling. Does it feel like there is something heavy on your shoulders or chest that is weighing you down? Try to describe the feeling - what is the image that comes to mind when you focus on that feeling?

3. Identify the Narrative

Consider the story in your mind about yourself, your emotions, or your relationship with the person that has triggered this response in you. Using the dishwasher example from above, the story we have told ourselves is that our partner doesn’t care about us and that we can’t rely on them when we need help. 

Notice what narrative comes up for you - maybe it’s that you’re “not good enough” or you’re “too much”. More often than not, we react to defend ourselves - we don’t want our partner or boss to think we’re not good enough so we react in a way to protect this very vulnerable part of ourselves.

To go one step further - consider where this narrative comes from. Do you actually believe this about yourself? Whose voice do you hear in your head saying those things? Many times we internalize messages that we’ve received from previous partners, parents, and even societal or cultural expectations.

4. Practice Self-Validation

Tell yourself “it makes sense that I feel this way”. Using our example it might sound like, “I was relying on my partner to help me out with a chore and I felt frustrated and hurt when they didn’t do it. It felt like I couldn’t rely on my partner when I needed them…it makes sense that I felt frustrated and hurt. I want to feel like I can rely on my partner”. Acknowledge that how you feel about the situation is okay and normal. 

Now see if you can also take accountability for your reaction to those emotions - “I felt frustrated and hurt and instead of communicating that to my partner calmly, I made a snarky comment and had an attitude. I recognize it may have been hard for my partner to respond calmly to my actions”. Continue to validate - “I sometimes make snarky comments because I don’t know how to communicate my feelings clearly and calmly quite yet. I get frustrated and my first reaction is to _________.”

5. Choose How to Respond

Although we’ve been using an example in the past tense, you can use these steps right in the moment as well. Consider how you want to move forward after understanding and validating your own feelings and behaviors. It could sound like, “I want to apologize to my partner now that I understand why I reacted that way” or it could even just be that you feel like you want to let go of the situation altogether. The present-moment changes are what will lead to long-term changes in how you handle emotions in conflict. When you’re feeling emotionally heightened, it can be difficult to take notice of your emotions in the moment and remember what steps to take. Try these skills a few times after you calm down from feeling overwhelmed.

Colorado Therapists for Emotional Regulation

If these skills feel particularly difficult or you feel like you could use some guidance, the therapists at CTC are here to help. Our therapists are trained in Emotionally-Focused Therapy and emotion regulation is a big component of the growth we advocate for in clients. We can help with these skills both in relationships and with individuals. You can reach out to one of our therapists for more information here or to schedule a complimentary 20-minute consultation here.

The Connection between Attachment, Depression, and Anxiety

Attachment Theory, first developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, has gained increasing attention on social media and has people questioning their attachment style and what they can do about it. 

But first things first - what is attachment and why should I care about it?

Attachment theory is the idea that humans innately desire not only social contact, but a sense of emotional closeness & connection. Humans want to know they have close people they can rely on to “see” them emotionally. From the moment we are born, we long to feel understood by the most important people in our lives - we want to know they will be there when we need them and that they will understand us if we share our vulnerabilities.

Attachment theory helps us understand the different ways that people act out this innate desire for connection and acceptance, depending on the different life experiences they have had. Bowlby and Ainsworth found that the young children they studied generally fell into one of four attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, or fearful-avoidant, sometimes called disorganized. Later researchers discovered that adults actually tend to fall into these same categories in their primary relationships later in life. 

To have a secure attachment style is to have a sense of security about yourself, your emotions, and your relationships - you feel comfortable and safe opening up to people in your life and you are attuned to their emotions and needs as well. 

You may, however, relate more to an anxious or avoidant attachment style. In these ways of relating, you can become so preoccupied with your own distress that it’s hard to see other people’s emotions or perspectives (anxious) or dismiss yours and other peoples’ emotions altogether (avoidant). A disorganized attachment style can develop when caregivers are unsafe or abusive, and can manifest in a mix of anxious and avoidant strategies in relationships. 

How do attachment styles relate to depression and anxiety? 

A good majority of people seek therapy services for either depression or anxiety, so why do we care about attachment?

Secure attachment has been found to be related to a number of positive mental health and well-being outcomes: resilience, optimism, high self-esteem, confidence, a sense of belonging, the ability to regulate emotions, sensitive attunement to others, compassion, empathic responsiveness…the list goes on and on. When an individual sees a loved one as a “safe and secure base”, they become better adjusted humans who have healthier relationships with others.

Anxious and avoidant attachment styles have been associated with vulnerability to depression and other stress related disorders like anxiety.

Many times anxiety and depression can manifest in relationships - an anxious attachment style can be related to feeling a sense of loss, abandonment, loneliness, and helplessness interpersonally. On the other hand, avoidant attachment has been associated with achievement-related depression - perfectionism, self-criticism, and hyper self-reliance. 

Here’s where Attachment-based and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT and EFIT) come in.

Emotionally Focused Therapy is one of the few therapy modalities proven to help people shift into more secure ways of relating to themselves and their partner. 

We can learn to become securely attached when we challenge the narratives we have about our own emotions and how our loved ones will react to them. A therapist becomes your “safe space” where you can explore your pattern of reacting to emotions and they can help you navigate understanding them better. In doing so, we become more open to emotional connection and vulnerability and less concerned with feelings of abandonment or hyper self-reliance. When we learn more secure ways of relating to ourselves and others, we create positive feedback loops that can counteract some of the most painful aspects of depression and anxiety. 

In EFT couples therapy, a therapist helps to facilitate communication with you and your partner about how your attachment narratives contribute to a pattern of conflict that you and your partner might get into, time and time again. Change happens when you and your partner are able to identify these narratives and patterns and become a “safe space” for one another to share emotions openly. This secure connection allows for growth and enhances both a stronger sense of self and resilience to stress.