I cringe inwardly when I hear: “I’ve had therapy for years”.  My gut churns, and I wonder what was going on so long.  Don’t get me wrong…I’ve worked with clients on serious issues that have taken time. Overcoming the effects of emotional trauma, it’s critical to move skillfully with patience.  Awareness and healing are never linear events.  Progress is rarely constant.  But experience has taught me resolution can be rapid and rarely must years pass before life gets better.  Often in a few sessions, I’ve seen some pretty exciting things happen that helped clients get on with living.  Here are a few secrets from that process:

Permission – Negative parental messages float around in our heads beneath our consciousness.  (“You’re such a noisy child!  Why can’t you behave!?!”)   Unspoken “family rules” from our childhoods still guide our behavior in ways we don’t realize. (“Go to college, girl, but don’t try to be so smart you won’t attract a doctor or lawyer for a husband!”).  Often in a few quiet, reflective conversations, clients gain permission to discard these useless messages and adopt more empowering ones.  (“My ADD is a unique trait and a skill, not a liability”.  “I can be a wife, mother and a lawyer”.  “I don’t need the approval of everyone to survive and thrive”.)

Awareness – In the storms, chaos and drama of a normal life, it is not uncommon to take habits, behaviors and attitudes for granted.  Humans crave routines as a basic safety need, and in those routines, we drift from the here and now.  We aren’t present.  A recent client shared with me this script for her life:  “Get up, work like a slave, get home at 7, pour a scotch, wolf a quick dinner and then crash.  What family?  What weight problem?  What friends?”  In the rare atmosphere of a coaching session, clients gain fresh perspective.  Objectivity emerges. They see the rut.  They get out of the rut.  They move into life.

Encouragement – We need each other.  We humans are pack animals and thrive in close contact with other humans.  We need a sense of caring and connectedness.  This is the essence of spirituality.  Being part of something not me.  Bigger than me.  Telling our stories in a safe place to listening, caring others is a primal instinct first expressed when we cried out at birth.  Some of us grew up in families that ignored us.  Or expected too much.  Or too little.  Just because we missed what we needed then doesn’t mean it’s forever beyond us.  And it doesn’t have to take that long.