Opening the curtains on a therapy session

When you are looking for help, you may already be overwhelmed by various emotions. If you’ve acknowledged you need help while juggling all these feelings – well done, this is, in fact, a big step. But making the very last step of contacting a therapist and starting therapy work may seem very daunting. This is a natural human response: our brain is wired to be afraid of the unknown. We inherited this response from ancient times, and it is ‘fired’ by the very primal part of our brain.

So how to find out how therapy feels? This famous video of Carl Rogers working with Gloria in a humanistic, person-centered way may help a bit. We chose it because most of our listed therapists work in a humanistic way. Humanistic covers many modalities – such as Carl Rogers's person-centered one. Core to this is a genuine human relationship with the client. One could argue that Rogers’ principles of empathy, genuine, and unconditional positive regard are fundamental principles of any relationship. And it’s the relationship that is key to the outcome of therapy, as proven by research. That’s why we start by bringing him in.