why therapy feels scary || emotional avoidance, mental health stigma, vulnerability and change

In this episode of Things We Say in Therapy, we explore why so many people avoid healing, even when their mental health struggles affect their daily lives and relationships. From stigma and generational beliefs to fear of vulnerability, emotional numbness, and bad therapy experiences, we break down the real reasons healing feels terrifying. We also look at how chaos and self-sabotage can become a comfort zone and why suppressing emotions only makes them worse. Finally, I share gentle, practical steps to start facing difficult feelings safely and with self-compassion. Healing is messy and difficult, but it’s possible and you deserve it. Thank you for listening! Please see the links below to support the show:

Transcript

Hey everyone. Welcome back to your regularly scheduled self-reflection. I am Tash, and this is things we say in therapy. A place to feel seen and heard, and to learn new things. We usually speak about the less popular sides of mental health and psychology.

Things that I don't hear about much. That I think are important to talk about.

If this information speaks to your experience, that's amazing. I'm so happy you're here. If not, I hope it's valuable for you in the future. Everyone's story is different and that's perfectly fine.

So onto today's topic therapy.

Just to preface this episode, I am very aware that it is a privilege to be able to afford therapy.

A lot of people these days can't access mental health services or time with a mental health professional, but this episode isn't about [00:01:00] that.

What I'm talking about here today is why people tend to avoid healing, why people tend to avoid their mental health struggles, despite it affecting them every single day,

despite it affecting their relationships and overall happiness.

This podcast is a space where I want to provide

access to 

conversations about mental health and psychology.

To approach difficult topics in a safe space. And really hope this finds people who need it. Let's get into it so people avoid dealing with. Tough emotions and past trauma for a lot of reasons,

and it is often assumed that people who go out of their way to seek therapy or engage in self-help content such as this.

Are eager to heal themselves and are , eager to get deep and to learn things about themselves and to

hold themselves accountable for the part that they play in their own difficulties.

But sometimes I might even say, a lot of the [00:02:00] time people subconsciously resist dealing with things, even if they're in a mental health space, even if they're spending money to go to therapy.

People have reasons for not wanting to heal and not wanting to access parts of their past.

So I'm hoping that today's episode can resonate with some people who 

are subconsciously resisting healing without even knowing it.

I hope it encourages self-reflection and I hope that people are seen in their struggles dealing with trauma and mental health, Is extremely difficult,

and I just wanna play my part in helping people.

So let's get straight into the possible reasons. Number one that I've got here is a lack of care about oneself. Maybe you are in a deep depression, maybe you have.

Melancholia, you have that everyday depression that is easily masked in your everyday activities, but

maybe you go home and you struggle to sit with your feelings.

If you are really [00:03:00] struggling like that and because of your mindset you don't really value wanting to help yourself, you think that it's pointless, hopeless, then maybe you won't seek therapy because you don't think it's worth it. You don't think anything's gonna change. I'm here to tell you that I was in that space five years ago, six years ago, I didn't even know how much I was struggling.

I was suppressing it. I was masking it with substances. It is worth it. Your life is valuable. If you are in that space, I really hope that you keep listening and I really hope that you find something valuable in this episode. Number two, the stigma of getting therapy or getting professional mental health help is very much alive. The stigma, especially in older generations.

I am 26 and in my generation, therapy is spoken about a lot with people my age. it's very normal. if you can afford it. I'm a believer that everyone can benefit, even if you're not really struggling. I believe that [00:04:00] it's not a fix it method. It's a proactive method.

Therapy only really became a thing in my parents' generation, in my parents' lifetime.

And it was only sort of introduced within psychiatric facilities first because people thought that therapy was only really a thing if you were on the brink of a mental break or not wanting to be here anymore.

It was only for people who were. Clearly very mentally ill. That is not the case.

Going to therapy used to be embarrassing. It used to be an admittance that there was something wrong with you.

And I, in certain cultures and communities, if people find out people outside of your family find out that you're going to therapy, it can be, there can be a lot of judgment and

the whole family's reputation is on the line.

It is seen as a weakness. It's seen as a failure

if you're wanting to get help. That is so wrong. It is so wrong to judge people. I think, especially in this day and age. [00:05:00] Everybody has struggles whether they want to admit it or not. If you say that you've never struggled with your mental health and you are my age or older,

If you say that you haven't struggled with your mental health, you are lying or deeply suppressing it, and that's a problem.

Number three, sort of carrying on from that previous point, different generations have different views on mental health. Obviously older generations, like I said, it was less accepted,

depressed people were labeled as lazy. There was a lot of misinformation out there about mental health. People just assumed that there was something deeply wrong with you if you struggled with your mental health. in my opinion, it was likely that a lot more people did, but no one wanted to admit it.

But because of how strong the stigma used to be, this can be passed down generations.

If you grew up in a house where you weren't allowed to express mental health struggles because your parents dismissed it, or you were scared of what they were gonna say, or worried about the reputation Ironically, this makes mental health struggles [00:06:00] worse. If you suppress things like that, it can cause a lot of worse issues than what you had initially.

When you feel invalidated like that, whether that's invalidating yourself or being invalidated by other people.

It can also be very much a selfish thing if you were told as a kid that you weren't allowed to tell other people that you were struggling because your parents said that it would look bad on them, that they would look like a bad parent if you were struggling. That's incredibly selfish. Or if it was put down to trust in religion, if you were told to just pray and things will get better.

It doesn't work like that unfortunately.

I think for me, I grew up in England and there's a big culture of having a stiff upper lip. UK stiff up a lip, meaning you just have to tough things out. You just have to take it on the chin. no one wants to get deep. No one wants to go beyond the surface level a lot of the time or that you used to be like that Anyway.

and some of the cultures therapy's seen [00:07:00] as like airing dirty laundry out to strangers. It's seen as wrong to let out the privacy of the family to people outside kind of thing.

Which, you know, I can, I can understand that. I can understand why that would be difficult if you're not the one that needs help.

Would you not prioritize helping your loved one above your reputation? I think that's very selfish. I think priorities are a bit skewed there. Maybe. number four, fearing vulnerability. This is a huge one. I think this is very widespread and very important to talk about.

It is no secret that confronting difficult emotions is terrifying. Everyone struggles with it. No one's a master at it. Even if you are the most solemn, detached, emotionally mature person in the world, feeling difficult, emotions is still hard. It's just easier to deal with. That's why we talk about them.

I totally understand it, and I numbed mine for years with alcohol. [00:08:00] I drank a lot. I'm not ashamed and you shouldn't be either.

A fear of crying, especially in the male population, can be seen as weak, pathetic, girly.

I think that if anyone's telling you that they have a lot of struggles themselves, anyone who truly cares about you will encourage you to talk about your feelings. Whatever that may encompass.

You could be fearing being out of control. Once you sort of open those gates of talking about difficult things, will it stop? When will it stop? Kind of thing.

It is so much easier in the moment to numb it with something as opposed to actually just dealing with it. That's why people use substances. That's why people doom scroll on social media. That's why people are workaholics. When I was a teen and I was really struggling and I didn't know what was happening to me, I just knew that I felt bad. I would pop my headphones on, put music on full blast, [00:09:00] and just scroll Pinterest for hours.

Upon hours, upon hours just to exit the world.

I would also watch horror movies in the dark by myself. It's like kind of laughable now because I've dealt with it, but it's, it is difficult to think of myself like that,

but it's true.

Sometimes people end up doing these things for their entire lives just to avoid feeling, just to avoid dealing with those really difficult emotions. That's why I'm here. That's why we need to talk about these things. When you do approach these things though, and the floodgates do open, if you've been suppressing for years and years, it is important to have a support system around you. It's important to have tools to self-soothe and to know your limits and to know that it is okay to shut things out sometimes, in order to feel safe.

And just to open the gates just a little bit, a little bit at a time.

I always include resources in the descriptions of my episodes. If you are really struggling

and you need someone to talk to,

number [00:10:00] five, if you've had bad past experiences with therapy, you may tend to avoid it. Finding a therapist that's right for you is a tough process. I've only ever had two therapists out of maybe eight to 10 that I thought were decent enough for me and I vibed with.

You really do need to commit and it is a difficult process opening up to multiple people to toe the line and see whether you are a good match.

I've had some awful therapists, just completely unhelpful, just listened to me talk the whole time, and didn't give me any tools for self-reflection and self-awareness, or they didn't call me out on anything, which that is something I personally really like in therapy. I need a therapist who will call me out on my shit and tell me when I need to stop being the victim or whatever it is.

I really value getting that bad feedback or that criticism. I use criticism lightly, but criticism because it helps you grow and sometimes [00:11:00] it's really helpful to hear things from someone else's perspective because it's fresh and you know, being in your own mind, you're very biased.

And being completely transparent. I have heard a lot of stories, bad stories about therapists too. I used to work as a business support officer for a large psychology provider, and The things you hear about some people in the professional space is scary. It's everywhere and it can be hard when you are looking for somebody to trust,

but you just need to know the signs. You need to know what to look out for. You need to advocate for yourself.

A lot of it is largely personal. You need to find someone that you gel with.

I will do a longer episode on how to find a therapist that's right for you, because I think it's very important to talk about, it can cause a, a lack of trust in the system if you've had a bad experience, and I'm really sorry if you have,

or if you just had a therapist who wasn't very good and you thought it was just a massive waste of time. That can happen. It is worth trying again, [00:12:00] it's worth doing it for yourself.

Another reason you could be avoiding therapy or talking about your mental health. Is if you've had backlash from other people when you've tried to talk about emotions or trauma in the past.

This is similar to stigma being passed down from parents, but you hear it from friends from other relatives. You can hear it from partners, But if you have friends that don't value, talking about the deep stuff, then it's so easy to just keep pushing them away, numbing them, dumbing them down, invalidating yourself and not to try to get help because you've been told by everyone around you that it's stupid or pointless. I hear you. Please listen to me when I tell you it's not pointless.

Talking about this stuff saves lives and improves lives. You just need to change your perspective and the people around you are shitty.

You need to be real with yourself. You need to trust yourself. If you really feel in your heart that you. Need to talk to somebody. Don't let the people around [00:13:00] you tell you that it's stupid.

Number seven, another reason is if you are invalidating your own struggles and your own feelings, things, This could present saying things like, oh, it's not that bad, or I can manage it. It could also be, I'm not worth it, or I'm trash anyway.

Both are wrong and both need attention.

Hear me now. If you really could manage, if you really were okay and could deal with your emotions, you wouldn't need to make those excuses. You wouldn't need to dull it down. You would just be managing it. Those excuses in themselves are reasons to talk, our reasons to get help.

And if you really were trash, if you really didn't mean anything, if it really was so pointless, you wouldn't be feeling these things so deeply.

If you weren't worth anything, you wouldn't care.

Those negative feelings that you have about yourself are born from caring.

You want to be better and do better for yourself,

and you're not right now, and that's okay. But [00:14:00] this is your little nugget of hope.

You have the capacity to feel that deeply. At the moment, it's feeling negative. It's a blessing and a curse, but it has the capacity to turn into feeling deeply in a positive way. Trust me, I've done it. I was like this once and I've changed it. It is possible.

Number eight. It's difficult to lose the identity that you've built around your pain.

Choosing to heal, it involves a lot of change. In my case, it involved uprooting almost everything in my life.

No more partying, no more alcohol.

Complete change in friendship group. New direction in life, new hobbies, new habits.

Deciding that you deserve more and opening the door to that change is terrifying,

but finding out who you really are

past that brick wall that you've built up around yourself to protect yourself, it is so worth it.

 it also doesn't necessarily mean that everything will change. It can also mean that your relationships that you currently have in your life will be improved. [00:15:00] But the most important thing is that you will be doing better for yourself.

As humans, we naturally always choose a familiar chaos over an unfamiliar peace

It's just our instinct, but productive change is always possible.

Similarly to number eight, but pain and chaos and self, self-sabotage, it can actually become an addiction. It's a biological

process that we have as humans,

It's more common than you think. Our human nervous system, we get used to being in a particular state

if we're in it for long enough, even if it's a negative state,

being in pain and having chaos in our lives. It actually becomes our safe space because it's what we're used to.

This is why it becomes so scary to face the unknown. This is why, for example, people who. Had a bad upbringing and have always been an abusive or chaotic or unhappy relationships. Once you get into a healthy relationship, it feels [00:16:00] boring because there's no chaos, there's no dramatic arguments. It's just peace and love and I healthy communication, but that to some people can feel negative because you don't have those really intense emotions happening all the time.

But that's your nervous system reacting to that positive change because it's no longer in that safe space that you've been in for so long. Once the nervous system feels that positive change, it can feel bad.

It is not your fault and it's biological, but at some point you have to face the music. At some point, you have to make that change, or you're forever gonna be stuck in this anxious state.

So now we're gonna get onto reasons why I think you should push past that fear of dealing with your mental health and dealing with your struggles.

After this, I'll be giving you some practical tools on how to implement dealing with your feelings, but here's why you should do that. Firstly, the more you suppress, the worse it gets. You have [00:17:00] to feel it to heal it. It's cliche, but it's true.

It will come out at some point. Your trauma and negative feelings will come out at some point. If you don't deal with them, it'll probably come out 10 times worse than if you just dealt with it upfront. It will come out when you don't expect it, and it'll come out in a way that you can't control.

Intentionally healing yourself is a way to stay in control of your emotions. At first, when you're feeling those negative emotions, it can feel like you're out of control. But once you quickly learn self-soothing techniques and how. It's best for you to deal with those things. It gets easier and easier.

Another reason to push past the fear is life satisfaction and happiness.

Healing in most cases is a lifelong process,

but healing coincides with happiness and a fulfilling life and reaching your potential.

Look at it this way, if you have a little bit of bad now, you'll have a lot of good later. If you have a little bit of good now, you'll have a lot of bad later.

Stop suppressing your [00:18:00] feelings.

Another reason is that it gets easier over time, like I mentioned just before. The more you put what works for you into practice, the easier it gets, the easier it gets to deal with negative emotions, the easier it gets to communicate.

Something very important to understand here is that you are never going to not feel negative emotions. That just won't happen. This is something that I'm learning at the moment. I, life happens and shit happens, but going through the awful stuff knowing that you are able to deal with it in a way that you can control in a state where you can trust yourself is so much easier.

It feels so much more secure than if you don't deal with it and you're just suppressing it until eventually it comes out later.

It is just an remarkable skill that is unmatched to be able to deal with it in a healthy way. Learning this has absolutely changed my life.

I used to think that being healed would mean that I'm just free and happy all the time.

But the lesson that I learned was that [00:19:00] I am free. I'm free from that reactive state of chaos and self-sabotage, but no one is ever happy all the time,

and you have to learn to be grounded when shit hits the fan.

Another reason is that if you heal, learn to deal with your shit, it will encourage others to do the same thing.

Why do you think I'm here saying all of this emotional intelligence and emotional maturity, emotional stability, they all need to be normalized. And I dunno why we're not taught it at a younger age.

It's a preventative solution that would solve so many problems and no one talks about it.

Another reason is it's a big. To the people that have hurt you in your life,

heal and let go of that negative energy that they brought you. Don't let them take up any more of your precious time,

and I want to remind you again that. Suppression, deflection and avoidance of pain was once in your life, the perfect [00:20:00] solution. It was the perfect way to survive in your circumstances at some point in your life. We develop these things as coping mechanisms to deal with hard things when we don't know how to deal with them.

And over time, that becomes your comfort blanket to avoid or deflect. But eventually these habits can become harmful

for us and for our relationships,

and it is important to move past them when they no longer are serving you. Even though they still feel like the safe place, even though it's your natural reaction,

once we learn that it's possible for us to move past that, it's necessary to do so.

So onto the final segment, how to push past the fear,

number one, find your motivation, whether that be one of the things that I mentioned before. Like not letting the people who have hurt you in the past take up any more of your time and energy,

or just wanting better for yourself. Simple as that.

Another motivation could be visualizing who you [00:21:00] want to be and where you want to be.

And mapping out, planning out what you need to do to get there is a really powerful and useful motivation.

Number two, start small. in order to heal safely, you need to feel safe.

So don't dive straight into your deepest and most traumatic wounds.

Start with little moments of self-reflection

in areas of your life that are troubling you. Maybe you could listen to another one of my episodes. I have a lot of material for self-reflection and self-awareness that maybe aren't as heavy as this episode.

It may also be helpful to learn your self soothing techniques. This could be watching tv, listening to an audio book. Work, whatever helps you feel safe and helps you sort of disconnect for a minute. Have control of where you are and what you're feeling, moving in and out of dealing with it, dealing with the hard stuff.

That is also a very important step. Number three. I acknowledge the reasons that you're [00:22:00] scared of healing.

I acknowledge any of the reasons that I mentioned previously in this episode. Once you can name why you're avoiding it, it may be easier to move past number four, trauma if it's left undealt with can convince us that we're still in that traumatic state or that traumatic experience.

It convinces you that you're still in danger. You need to remind yourself and ground yourself into remembering that you are safe in this current moment. 

Using mindfulness techniques can be really helpful for feeling grounded,

like placing your feet firmly on the floor.

Or describing your surroundings can help you realize that the current situation you are in is safe.

Number five, coming at it with curiosity instead of judgment.

This is helpful in a lot of areas of your life, but in the context of this,

instead of asking yourself and getting irritated with yourself, saying why am I feeling like this? Why can't I get over this? [00:23:00] Ask yourself, why am I still holding onto this? What is this? What about this is so significant to me? And that sort of opens the door into understanding yourself a bit more.

Number six, therapy is not the only method of healing. Talking and dealing with negative emotions is not the only method of healing.

Things like art therapy.

Creativity, spirituality, and spiritual communities. These are all also ways of healing and moving past trauma.

Number seven, understanding that healing

and moving through pain is a messy process.

Allow yourself the space to not be okay. Allow it to take time. It's all part of the process.

Number eight, approaching healing and positive change is a massive act of courage.

Going to therapy doesn't mean that you're broken.

It means that you are brave enough to deal with hard things.

A lot of people go through their entire life not acknowledging their pain, and you listening to this right now is your first step.

And number nine, [00:24:00] healing doesn't get rid of your pain. It just changes your relationship with it.

Understand that it's still part of who you are. It's made you who you are today.

It's possible to turn all of that negativity and all of the tough experiences that you've had in your life into something positive.

Thank you so much for listening to episode 10. Wow. Episode 10. your support means the world to me. If anything in this episode or anything in my other episodes has resonated with you, I would love to hear about it. If I've missed anything that you think would be valuable to talk about, I'm open to feedback.

I want to improve and give people advice on the gaps in the mental health space.

I would absolutely love it if anyone who enjoyed this episode would support me on buy me a coffee or on the things we say in therapy Buzzsprout website.

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Again, all of the links are in the description. Thank you so much for listening. Please be kind to yourself. Please be kind to others. I'll see you again. Bye.