Why Do People Avoid Therapy? I Was One of Them

January 2024. Home cleared, bags packed, eyes full of tears and a heart so heavy. Saying goodbye to a place that shaped me, that I called home, felt like a loss. 

I told everyone I wasn't ready to leave London. What I didn't say, maybe didn't even know then, was that I wasn't ready to leave a version of myself behind. 

Moving back was difficult; culture shock, lifestyle change, a little bit of independence taken away…I remember isolating myself, didn't meet my friends for a few days, used jet lag as an excuse to stay in my room, basically not wanting to get out.

Around the same time, I started working as a pro-bono therapist and realized that I have to start therapy for myself too. I found a therapist through a referral, told her everything that was on my mind, I felt like a weight was taken off me.

A few sessions later, something shifted, but not in a good way. I felt that my experiences were being normalized, and not validated. I wanted validation!! I felt misunderstood and saw myself correcting her multiple times. The confrontation was not easy, but it had to happen and I stopped seeing her. 

And then I did what I now see as classic avoidance. I gave myself every reason to wait. I wasn't earning. I needed time. ‘I was fine.’ The reasons kept changing but the avoidance stayed the same. I didn't let myself see that the mismatch was about fit, not a verdict on therapy. That there would be a therapist whose way of working actually fit mine.

Knowing that still wasn't enough to make me move.

Multiple experiences. Multiple transitions. Multiple breakdowns where something quietly cracked and then got quietly plastered over. Still, ‘I'm fine.’

It took starting to see clients of my own for me to finally look for a therapist. Work became the deadline I couldn't move.

I went into that first consultation call braced for the same feeling; of having to justify myself, of being put into a framework that didn't quite fit.

It didn't feel like that.

There was no pressure to explain why I felt what I felt. No sense that my history with therapy was something to defend or reframe. I could say "I left my last therapist" without feeling like I was being assessed for it. Something she said in that call, I don't remember the exact words, made me feel like she actually got it. Not just what I was saying, but how I needed to be heard.

That was enough. I decided to try.

Months and months of sessions later, here we are. I still don't have all the answers, but for the first time, I'm not pretending I do. And maybe that's the point.

If this resonated, this might too.

If any part of this felt familiar, the waiting, the wrong fit, the reasons that kept changing, we're here when you're ready.

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