Client Insight: “Therapy was about learning to manage my trauma, not get rid of it”

Emotional eaters tend to be tempted by a quick fix, especially if you’re weight goes up and down with your feelings. Heck, that’s how they sell diets to us again and again: “lose 20 lbs in a week!”, “Here’s the one thing you need for lasting weight loss.” The truth is, there is no quick fix when it comes to a healthy lifestyle. And that’s true about therapy too.

When first dipping their toe into therapy, clients will often begin look for a concrete timeline on when they can expect to have managed their grief or processed their trauma. This makes sense: we want to know when the tough stuff will end so we can get on with living out lives. But the difficult thing about these experiences that impact our emotions, outlooks, and actions, is that they will always be with us in some capacity.

But don’t lose hope! Therapy not only gives you an outlet to process your emotions, but you also learn strategies along the way that you can draw on when you need to. For example, if someone had lost their dad at a young age, the thought of walking down the aisle at their wedding might be triggering. While this person might have gone through therapy to deal with the death of their loved one, concrete strategies might be needed to get through the wedding day itself. This could be whatever brings some peace to the bride: having a close friend or family member accompany them or completely do away with the aisle tradition!

This is just one example, but there are so many ways you can learn to manage your past when it comes up again. In fact, we’ve got a few right here on the CEE blog! Adding different tools to your toolkit in therapy makes you better ‘armed’ to keep living the life you want!

💛 Your peace awaits.