No matter how eager you are to change your ways, there will come a point in therapy when you think, “This sucks. Dante forgot to include ‘Therapy’ as the tenth layer of hell.”

It’s hard work. Maybe you had apanic attack during a session, or realized some difficult truths about your personality. Sometimes therapy is boring, or you’re convinced your poortherapistis bored. You talk about the same things week after week, over and over again, and nothing in you is changing.

Don’t quit.

Yes, it’s tempting. If you quit, you don’t have to spend anothersecondthinking about your relationship with your mother! You’re forgiven for thinking that sounds glorious — but it’s not. There’s rhyme and reason to therapy: helping you understand yourself, and finding ways to cope (or even overcome!) youranxiety, oranger,depression, other mental health issues, or just keeping you on track with your goals.

Unfortunately, the path isn’t always easy. But keep walking toward your goal, even when therapy is tough. Here’s why.

When Therapy Is Tough, It’s Real

If therapy was fun, everyone would get therapized! Unfortunately, good therapy sometimes requires digging deep into your subconscious and psyche — and revealing what may be some painful memories and feelings stored there.

Does your stomach turn and your hands go clammy when you think about your therapist’s office? That’s a good sign (assuming you have a good therapist —here’s how to check). Don’t feel guilty if you’re anxious about diving into your most tender emotions.

But don’t cancel your sessions, either. Few people get a thrill from laying their heart bare on the table, but emotional honesty is necessary for a therapeutic relationship.

But perhaps you’re thinking, “Therapy isn’t hard. It’sboring.” You’ve been talking about the same topics for three weeks now: your fraught relationship with your sister, or yourwork stress. It’s tough. It can even be a little dull. But, although your chats may feel repetitive, you’re circling around something important — if you’re still talking about the same thing, that indicates something unresolved thatneedsresolving. More time will help you sort out the truth of the situation.

To Overcome Painful Emotions, You Have to Feel Them

In therapy, youexperience painful emotions(and yes, that can be tough). But experiencing these painful emotions alongside a trained professional will make your life better in the long run.

This processblows. There’s nothing less fun than reliving your worst, most painful memories — sometimes more than once. But the benefits are enormous. So stick with therapy, even when it hurts.

Especiallywhen it hurts.

It Gets Better, Trust Me

Therapy won’t always be miserable. Pinky-promise. There are so many benefits to attending therapy regularly. You’ll have a built-in place to unload your worries every week. You’ll learn how to handlenewchallenges with grace. And the mental health concerns you originally wanted to address, like anxiety or depression, will improve over time, too.

But those achievements require slogging through the hard, sucky parts of therapy… and not quitting. There’s no better feeling than a sense of accomplishment a good therapy session can bring — except for the first morning you wake up anxiety-free. Unpacking all the junk built up in your subconscious takes hard work, and it’s often not fun. But itisworthwhile.

Sticking with therapy, even when it’s tough to sit with painful thoughts and emotions, is sometimes essential for your mental health. Therapists are trained to work through difficult feelings with you, which means you have todealwith those feelings.

Yep. It’s really, really hard.

But successfully completing therapy creates its own reward: a lightened mental burden, better tools for handling new challenges, and an increased sense of self-worth. So stick with it. Even when it is absolutely, one-hundred-percent theworst.

Our goal at Talkspace is to provide the most up-to-date, valuable, and objective information on mental health-related topics in order to help readers make informed decisions.

Articles contain trusted third-party sources that are either directly linked to in the text or listed at the bottom to take readers directly to the source.

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