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“I intend to make my own way in this world”
(Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1968)
What leads to healing?
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When you feel that you are not being judged or labelled for who you are, for what you feel, or for the experiences you've had, but rather you see how all your experiences and all your parts are treated equally (with acceptance, openness, and warmth),
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When you feel that your experiences are deeply understood and explored, when you see how those things that you couldn't even see or express clearly are perfectly put into words by the person listening to you,
you begin to transform and heal, and this becomes obvious through the following things:
Healing your self-esteem and self-confidence
Understanding your own emotions
Better relationships with those around you
Autonomy and the courage to follow your own path
A therapeutic relationship in which you are consistently treated with acceptance, warmth, and understanding (regardless of what you are going through) will have beneficial effects on the way you treat yourself. In simple terms, you can think of it as a “contagion ” effect. In other words, the therapist’s non-judgmental attitude ends up diminishing the negative thoughts and limiting beliefs that you have about yourself, including your self-criticism.
In time, being treated like this by your therapist is what helps you stop doubting yourself. In the absence of being judged, you end up feeling more confident, strong, and satisfied with who you are .
When you are no longer preoccupied with judging yourself (when you no longer feel the need to automatically label everything that you experience), you make room to truly discover why you feel or react in a certain way.
What's actually happening is that you're making room for curiosity and openness (towards your own experience), things that can help you understand exactly what the causes of your suffering are and what's sustaining it (and that's what makes room for change).
Once you learn to stop judging yourself, it becomes easier to treat others the same way. Once you're able to greet all your experiences with openness and curiosity (without labels), you no longer feel the need to filter someone else's experience through your own personal interpretations (and, thus, you remain open to understanding how they truly experience things).
In other words, once you start treating your own experiences with openness and acceptance, it becomes easier to create empathetic connections with those around you.
Once you start to really understand your emotions, thoughts, and experiences (in the absence of any labels or judgments), you may find that you have spent a long time being disconnected from your own true feelings and desires, or that you have made some decisions which do not align with who you truly are.
A therapeutic relationship in which you feel neither judged nor pushed in a certain direction is central to building autonomy. Such a relationship creates a space in which you are free to make your own decisions and follow (or find) your own path, without fear of being judged and without the need to receive external validation or to meet someone else's expectations.
If you feel like you want all those things in your life
or if your answer is "YES" to at least one of the questions below...
Do you feel alone and misunderstood amidst your struggles?
Do you question your own worth or struggle to feel good in your own skin?
Do you find it difficult to set boundaries in your relationships?
Do you feel like you're not sure who you really are?
... I can help you.
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