Why do we avoid going to psychotherapy?

A reflection on the common unfounded fears of those who refuse to go to psychotherapy.

You may have noticed that the human being is generally afraid of the unknown.. This is a primitive nerubiological effect that works in automatic mode, designed to protect us from danger.

When we are faced with a situation that puts us at risk, we feel fear. Fear acts as an alert that if we know how to read it will be useful to us, as a tool that will mobilize us to get us to safety, initiating the physiological defense mechanisms of fight, flight or freeze. In this way we learn to read from the environment certain patterns that make us perceive what is everyday and normal and before which we are safe because the existing risks are not of greater alert since we have already learned to defend ourselves from them.

The opposite is the case when something new emerges, which is out of the pattern.. Faced with this new thing, not only do we not know what it is, we do not know how to face it; therefore, we consider that we are facing a potential risk, (emotional, physical, of life and many more), and fear arises and with it we will react in some physiological way of fight or flight.

When we do not know something, our first tendency is to alert and fear arises.

This way of protecting us operates in all the scopes of our life. For example, when we are offered a new job position, when a new colleague arrives, when we start a new job or project, when we are invited to meet new friends, when a son or daughter is born, when we go on a trip, when we start a couple relationship and every time we face challenges together, and of course, when faced with a pandemic situation due to COVID-19, among many other possibilities.

Y And so it is with our inner world, with our subjectivity.. Many people find it very frightening and even unpleasant to look into their own inner world. Undergoing an EMDR psychological therapy process involves looking at oneself, confronting one's inner life, learning to look and find out what is bothering us.

The feeling of fear when pushing for self-knowledge in therapy

It is to be expected that fear arises, since it is unknown. Usually no one teaches us, we do not learn to relate to ourselves, only to the external.. We are taught that when we feel sorrow we have to make it go away, "don't cry", we were told, "it's not that bad, dry your tears and come to dinner, there is no reason to be sad". That is, we learn to avoid our subjective activity. Or we learn to deny what is happening to us, as when it happened to us: "Dad, I have a problem, all the kids have a green backpack and I have a yellow one and they make fun of me... that is not a problem, the problem is what I have at work, go do your homework".

By encouraging us to avoid, deny and also minimize our needs as children, it is expected that it will be difficult for us as adults to take care of ourselves, to understand what is happening to us and to solve our emotional states.

There are many people who do not know themselves.I mean beyond visible qualities or behaviors, (i.e., I am intelligent, I have creativity, I like to sing, I get angry when I am lied to or I am sociable...). I mean to observe our mind and notice what emotions arise, what is felt, what is the bodily correlate, what are the thoughts, positive and negative beliefs about me, about the world, the worldview.

To achieve this implies relating to oneself, which is already complex if it has never been done. And trying to do so is overwhelming, as one does not know how to proceed; in fact, some people feel ridiculous. And there is the "risk" that you might see something that you don't want to see, because you wouldn't know what to do with it or tolerate it, which translates into something that you don't want to see.which translates into something unknown. Remember that you fear what you don't know, what is out of the pattern, because it puts you out of your comfort zone.

The issue is that we are more focused on the outside, with a locus of control placed on the other, and when difficulties begin to arise, we always focus on what the other does or does not do to us, the defects of the other, "that the other does not love me, does not listen to me, does not know what makes me happy", and we give more control to the other people in our lives than to ourselves. We wait for them to give us solutions or for the other to change in order to feel loved, and as this does not happen, the discomforts continue and begin to become more evident, overwhelming and unmanageable.

What to do?

To solve what is happening to us we have to start by stopping avoiding, denying, minimizing our inner world, our real needs of love, our emotions and thoughts, and start relating to ourselves, to ourselves, to the other person, to our emotions and thoughts. start by relating to ourselves, bonding with ourselves, looking at ourselves, even if we don't like what we see.. This is the only way to understand in depth what is happening to us, the possible and varied causes, in order to find solutions and make more appropriate decisions.

This is one of the initial challenges of the EMDR psychological therapy, to get the person to learn to know himself, to stop avoiding, to identify and to take care of his self-care needs. Whoever succeeds in taking the step, improves his inner quality of life and as a consequence changes the way he throws himself into life.. Because her paradigm of how she perceives society, people and relationships and how she perceives herself, changes. You regulate your thoughts and emotions, you stop feeling so much fear, anxiety, grief. The negative beliefs of the "Self" are replaced with conviction, by "I am loved", "I can make it", "I am safe", "I can overcome challenges", among others, as the case may be.