Good job. You took the leap. You reached out, did a consult, and now you have your first session. Here is a bit of what you may experience…
In a typical session, you can expect to work with a range of modalities suited to your unique being and what is showing up in your life at the time. You and your therapist will take your first sessions to hear your story and identify what goals you have and design a treatment path that feels empowering for you.
Your therapist will ask loads of questions or you will talk a lot those first sessions. They will be gathering feeling, essence, information, pain points, symptoms, and hopes from your time together.
Your nervous system will be feeling your therapist out… and honestly theirs will be doing the same. This is part of the magic. You are beginning to create a safe space together.
You may feel the rush of blood to your face or the racing of your heart. You may feel afraid to speak about the pain or begin to work on the trauma. You may not even think that you have anything to trauma or wounding and you are just curious about why you feel the way you feel. You may be scared to share things you have never said out loud.
You may feel the lump in your throat as you are holding back the tears. Your therapist will be sitting in the chair hoping that you let them fall. Hoping that you can relax enough into the moment for the tears to water your face and baptize your soul.
Your therapist may say something like…
“I love your tears and they are welcome here.”
It may take many sessions to develop that safety and that’s okay.
You may feel desperate for relief and they might remind you that it takes time and this work of unlearning, learning, shedding, untangling, healing, and becoming takes time.
But here is the thing... Your therapist cannot do the work for you.
You will have to embrace the uncomfortable and the vulnerable in order for change to happen.
Your therapsit will hopefully be validating and warm but will also challenge you to get in the arena.
We can’t sit on the sidelines and expect deep change in our lives. We must get in the game. The space that you and your therapist create can be the proverbial gym, rehearsal hall, or training field for the game of in your life.
You are being invited in this space to Dare Greatly with your life.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
— Theodore Roosevelt
It may get messy. It may get worse before it gets better. It may be an easier road for you and the integration process happens naturally. Whatever your journey has for you in this season… We are here for it.
Many of us stay stuck in patterns and ways of being that are all we have ever known and experience shame because nothing seems to change…as hard as we try.
We hope to help you uncover the blocks in the way of your healing but we can't do it for you. Like a midwife cannot push the baby out of the canal for the mother, we can not create the new life you long for without YOU.
As your emotional/spiritual midwife we will:
stay steady and remind you to breathe.
support you with empirically studied modalities, perspectives, skills, and compassion.
honor our own boundaries and help you discover and implement yours.
communicate what we see and feel and listen to your communication to us.
remain witness to your pain and remind you of the glory on the other side.
We appreciate your courage and look forward to exploring the internal and external landscape of YOU with you.
Very Truly,
Your Bungalow Team of Therapists
