When people are struggling, it’s natural to look for answers. We might ask a friend what they think we should do, search online for advice, read a self-help book, or look for practical strategies that might make things feel better.
Sometimes that’s exactly what we need. Psychotherapy is different.
Psychotherapy isn’t about someone telling you what to do. It is a process of exploring your experience with another person who is trained to help you understand yourself, your patterns and your difficulties in greater depth.
So, what actually is psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is a professional relationship in which you have space to explore the things that are troubling you, affecting your relationships, or making it difficult to live in the way you would like.
This might include current difficulties, longstanding patterns, relationships, emotions, life changes or experiences from the past.
There isn’t one single way to do psychotherapy. Different therapists work from different theoretical approaches, and different people may benefit from different kinds of therapy.
Some approaches are highly structured and focus on particular thoughts, behaviours or skills. Others are more exploratory, looking at relationships, emotions, experiences and patterns that have developed over time.
My own approach is humanistic, integrative and embodied, which means that I draw on different therapeutic perspectives while paying attention to the whole person — including thoughts, emotions, bodily experience and relationships.
You can read more about this in What Is Dance Movement Psychotherapy? and My Approach.
Why doesn’t a therapist just tell you what to do?
It can be tempting to think that if you’re seeing a therapist because something isn’t working, the therapist should simply tell you how to fix it.
But there is an important difference between receiving advice and developing your own understanding.
Imagine telling a therapist: “I keep saying yes to things when I really want to say no.”
An adviser might suggest: “You need to learn to set better boundaries.”
That may be perfectly sensible advice. But it doesn’t necessarily help you understand why saying no is so difficult for you.
In therapy, we might become curious about what happens when you consider saying no.
What do you notice?
What are you afraid might happen?
What happens in your body?
What have you learned about your needs and other people’s needs?
How have you experienced relationships in the past?
What does saying yes protect you from?
And perhaps most importantly: what would it be like to discover that you are allowed to have needs of your own?
The answers will be different for every person.
Therapy isn’t about finding the “right” answer
One of the things I value about psychotherapy is that there isn’t necessarily a single answer waiting to be discovered.
The purpose isn’t for me to work out what you should do and then tell you.
Instead, we explore what is happening so that you can develop a clearer understanding of yourself and make choices that feel more authentic to you.
Sometimes that may lead to practical changes.
Sometimes it may mean recognising a pattern that has been affecting you for years.
Sometimes it may involve grieving something that cannot be changed.
And sometimes it may simply mean becoming kinder towards yourself.
The therapist isn’t there to judge you
It can be difficult to talk honestly about ourselves.
We may worry that our thoughts, feelings or behaviour will seem unreasonable, selfish, weak or embarrassing.
A therapeutic relationship offers a space where you can explore these things without having to present yourself in a particular way.
This doesn’t mean that a therapist agrees with everything you think or do.
It means that the therapy provides an opportunity to look at your experience with curiosity rather than judgement.
Understanding why we respond in a particular way doesn’t mean that we can never change it.
Often, understanding is what makes change possible.
What about friends and family?
Talking to people we trust can be incredibly important.
Friends and family can offer companionship, encouragement, perspective and sometimes very good advice.
But they are also part of our lives and relationships. They have their own experiences, feelings and opinions about what we should do.
A therapist has a different role.
The therapeutic relationship is specifically there for your therapeutic work. The focus isn’t on what the therapist wants from you or what they think you should do with your life.
This creates a different kind of space for exploration.
Therapy isn’t about being given homework
Some forms of psychotherapy do involve exercises, reflection between sessions or practical strategies. These can be very useful.
But psychotherapy doesn’t have to be about completing tasks or achieving a particular outcome every week.
Sometimes the most important work is simply noticing something that you have never noticed before.
Perhaps you realise that you always apologise before expressing a need.
Perhaps you notice that your body becomes tense whenever someone is disappointed with you.
Perhaps you discover that you have become so accustomed to looking after everyone else that you aren’t sure what you actually want.
These moments of awareness can become starting points for deeper exploration.
And this is where embodiment matters
In my practice, I don’t see the mind and body as separate.
We don’t simply think our way through life. We experience it physically as well as emotionally and cognitively.
You may notice your stomach tightening when you’re anxious, your shoulders rising when you’re under pressure, or yourself becoming very still when something feels difficult.
Sometimes your body seems to know something before you have words for it.
As a Dance Movement Psychotherapist, I can invite attention to these experiences when it feels useful.
That doesn’t mean every session involves movement.
Sometimes we simply talk.
Sometimes we pause and notice a physical sensation.
Sometimes a small movement, gesture or change in posture helps us explore something further.
The aim isn’t to tell you what your body means. It’s to help you become curious about your own experience.
You remain the expert on yourself
One of the most important principles in my approach is that you are the expert on your own experience.
I bring professional knowledge, therapeutic experience and curiosity.
You bring your life, your history, your relationships and your experience of being you.
We work together.
That doesn’t mean therapy is always comfortable or that I’ll simply agree with everything you say. Sometimes therapy involves noticing contradictions, questioning familiar assumptions or approaching something that has previously been difficult to see.
But the process is collaborative.
My role isn’t to become the authority on your life.
It is to help you develop a stronger relationship with yourself so that you can make your own choices with greater awareness.
So, what is psychotherapy for?
There may be times when advice is exactly what we need.
But sometimes the problem isn’t that we don’t know what to do.
We may already know.
We know we need to rest, but can’t allow ourselves to.
We know we need to say no, but can’t seem to do it.
We know a relationship isn’t working, but can’t understand why we stay.
We know we want something to change, but keep finding ourselves repeating the same patterns.
That’s where psychotherapy can offer something different.
It gives you time and space to slow down, become curious about what is happening, understand where your patterns come from and explore what might be possible.
Not someone standing outside your life telling you what to do.
Someone alongside you, helping you understand your experience well enough to find your own way forward.