Ever feel like you want to dive deeper in therapy but find yourself holding back? Maybe there’s a part of you that longs for real healing, for a deeper understanding of yourself, yet another part may unconsciously keep putting on the brakes. You’re not alone—this push-pull is incredibly common, even when we think we’re ready to make progress.
The truth is, many of us have learned to live in deprivation. We’ve gotten used to not giving ourselves “enough” of anything, whether it’s love, attention, or understanding. For some, it’s about playing the martyr—always putting others first, spending freely on our children or “obligations,” but when it comes to ourselves, we hesitate, rethink, and hold back. Sound familiar?
For others, the hesitations about therapy—how often to go, whether we really need it, questioning if it’s productive, worrying about the cost, wondering if it’s actually helping—are rooted in fear. We may not label it as fear, but deep down, we avoid going deeper for fear of perhaps being needy, dependent, angry, or that someone will see us for who we really are. The unconscious mind hides the truth about our insecurities because we’re scared or even embarrassed to face them.
And then there’s the emotional intimacy, sometimes our first time really feeling understood, close, yes, even loved. It can feel like too much, too fast, or too overwhelming. It can even feel too good—like it’s overstimulating—and we end up distracting ourselves by being “productive” in therapy, focusing on concrete problems or everyday goals. As if solving a checklist of issues can protect us from the rawness of being truly seen. But here’s the thing: deeper growth happens in the empty spaces, in those quiet moments when we’re not trying to fix or fill anything, in those moments when we speak without censure and put our hearts on the line.
When we fill our therapy sessions with only the busyness of life, try to smooth over any awkward silences, or stop ourselves from coming regularly and frequently, we can miss out on opportunities to be vulnerable and to turn our attention inward. And sometimes that’s ok. Sometimes that’s just what we need. Yet at the same time, it’s often in those quiet, unscripted moments—when we stop focusing on external solutions, on the struggles we could just as easily talk through with a friend or partner—that we start to uncover what’s really going on beneath the surface. What have we been avoiding? What do we truly long for? Only in the space can we find out.
In therapy, it can feel uncomfortable to leave room for silence, to prioritize coming to sessions even when we don’t know “what to talk about,” to sit through those moments of tension or confusion without rushing to fill them… yet that’s where the transformation happens. When we give ourselves permission to sit in the quiet, we make room for deeper healing. It’s in these pauses, in the spaces between words, that we can finally touch those parts of ourselves we’ve been avoiding. That’s where the real breakthroughs live—beneath the surface distractions, in the quiet moments of reflection. Therapy offers us an opportunity to immerse ourselves in a transitional space; a playground for exploring our minds, devoid of the social niceties and diplomacies that tend to frame (and limit) our everyday interactions with others.
Are you ready to explore those empty spaces? That’s where the healing begins.
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