– Why Nashville Individual Counseling Can Take a Long Time…Even Years

WHY NASHVILLE INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING CAN TAKE A LONG TIME…EVEN YEARS

It’s hard to change. Even the word “change” usually conjures up feelings up parental pressure or unrealistic authoritarian demands. Yet, in our core, I believe we are all striving to be new and different. It’s not so much that we are bad or wrong, but the human condition calls us to be better, even better versions of ourselves.

It shouldn’t be a shock to consider that most people who darken the doors of Nashville individual counseling are looking to change. Most people only think of entering counseling when something is broken or stuck. We don’t like change, but we definitely don’t like the feeling of being stuck. So, we are caught: change sounds hard, but being stuck is suffocating. As such, most people cling to the idealistic notion that counseling can take a few sessions and get us right back on course. Whenever I ask my clients if they honestly believed it would only take a few sessions to set things right again, they typically give me a sheepish grin and say, “No, I knew that really wasn’t going to be the case.”

WHY CAN’T WE CHANGE QUICKLY?

This is a question I get asked often. We feel the burning desire in us to be or do something different, and we want to act on it quickly. For most of us, however, the change we are seeking in Nashville individual counseling has to do with core patterns we have established over years of time. And most of these patterns were created in response to pain or heartache that we experienced when we were younger, or at least much younger than we are now. This pain we experienced back then has become a platform from which we have based so many actions upon since. These actions, for the most part, were taken unconsciously. And these actions, especially those created based on heartbreak, were actions meant to protect and survive. The problem is: They worked! Those actions really did help us survive. But now, in our current state, we may not need to employ them in the same way we did back then.

Nashville individual counseling helps ground us back into the reality that the defenses we created were in response to the pain and heartache we experienced. If we were to somehow just drop those old actions, it wouldn’t do justice to the pain we felt deep in our souls. We were deeply harmed and that harm needs to be acknowledged and understood. We protected ourselves to the degree that we were harmed. And the length in which we employed those protective mechanisms illuminates how scared we were to ever get hurt like that again. We can’t just change quickly, because our bodies and hearts aren’t prepared for the reality that if we let our guards down we WILL BE HURT AGAIN. To be in relationship with another person, or the world, we will be hurt. We will be disappointed. If we don’t understand how deeply we were hurt and if we don’t understand the risk involved in getting hurt again, we are simply setting ourselves up to be harmed in the same, and sometimes more painful, ways.

WHAT CHANGE MEANS IN NASHVILLE INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING

Nashville individual counseling is a slow process, but each movement in the direction of change is real and pivotal. A slow process does not mean NOT CHANGING. Any movement towards being different is change in its essence. We also must recognize this. It’s a bizarre human condition that no matter how much we have been hurt, and experience points us in the direction to shut down and shut out people, we still have a craving for better and more intimate relationships. Sometimes, it’s not fun being human.

If you are wanting some change in your life, don’t be dismayed by the reality that change may take a while. Nashville individual counseling exists to provide a safe-haven for individuals to work through their life in a pace that is comfortable to them. Chris Roberts is a licensed professional counselor who works with individuals in the greater Nashville, TN area. Chris would love the opportunity to talk with you more about your concerns and your questions.