Opening up and talking about your problems to friends, family or your GP is invaluable — that's the case now, always has been, and always will be. Sharing where you are and what's happening in your own mind can lighten the load, offer some release, and help others point you towards the best available support. That's unless the best available support turns into a sit-down, talk-based approach on repeat, and here's why that distinction matters.
Why reliving the past can make things worse
As evidence grows that anti-depressant drugs are ineffective, more of us turn to talk-based counselling or therapy. But counselling and talk-based therapy can mean being traumatised again: you have to go over everything that's hurting you, explain your thoughts, feelings and emotions, and describe what made you feel that way in the first place. Our words shape our thinking, our thinking shapes our feelings, and our feelings shape our behaviour — so if the aim is to remove negative thoughts and feelings, talking about them again and again can end up reinforcing the very thing that's hurting you. Being asked to remember a time you felt good often means looking past the negative to find it, which can leave you feeling worse, not better.
A recent article in The Psychologist journal, titled "When Therapy Causes Harm," notes that around 10% of people get worse after starting therapy, despite a persistent belief that talk-based therapy and counselling are harmless. New research from King's College London found that offering immediate psychotherapy straight after a traumatic event can actually increase the likelihood of someone developing post-traumatic stress disorder. Reflecting that caution, British military personnel who experience trauma are now given at least a month to talk to family, friends and colleagues before professional help is suggested.
Therapy needs to move with the times
Talk-based therapy and counselling were genuinely valuable when they first became widespread, at a time when we weren't used to talking about our feelings at all. But therapy, like technology, needs to move forward with the times — talk-based therapy became popular around 20 years ago, at roughly the same time as the Nokia 3210, and things have moved on a great deal since then, in therapy as much as in phones. The old idea that "you have to get worse before you get better" isn't true, and never has been. You don't need to dig up the past to deal with the thoughts and feelings it left behind — you need to deal with the thoughts and feelings themselves. Imagine a therapy where you didn't have to go over everything again and again, and still felt much better after only a session or two — that would be a result. Approaches like NLP, which has been around since the 1970s, aim to do exactly that.
This isn't a plug for private practice — this article is read by people in countries including Australia, Dubai, Italy and the US, and plenty of talk-based therapists and counsellors will understandably disagree with it. That's a fair position for them to hold. The argument here is simply that, done on repeat, reliving painful events can cause more harm than good for some people, and it's worth knowing that before choosing which route to take.
If professional talk therapy isn't for you right now
It's fair to ask, at this point, what other options are actually available. Health services are currently stretched, and not everyone can afford to enter private therapy. The answer is largely about knowledge: the internet has a vast array of resources available, with thousands of self-help videos only a click away, and approaches such as EMDR, NLP, Havening and hypnosis all having self-help tutorials available. It may be worth doing as much of that self-help as you can before deciding whether to take on the harder task of formally, and repeatedly, revisiting a painful past.
