Individual Therapy
What Has Gotten You to This Point?
There’s a great scene in the movie No Country for Old Men, the brilliant (and at times bloody) 2007 Coen brothers Western-meets-crime-thriller set in rural Texas.
In it, steely killer Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) confronts Carson Wells (played by Woody Harrelson), a hitman who was hired to track him down.
“Let me ask you something,” Chigurh says in a flat tone of voice, a massive muzzled shotgun pointed squarely at Wells’ belly. “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
Wells attempts to calmly beg, bargain, reason, argue, and even buy his way out of what is clearly a very bad situation.
Of course, none of it works.
The conversation ends abruptly with a flash and stifled blast.
It’s time to rewrite some of your “rules.”
Your situation probably isn’t this dramatic. But it still feels pretty serious. There are important things on the line. And so, it might be time to consider your “rules.”
We all live by rules. Some of them we know. Others just run silently in the background, like the apps powering the computer or handheld device you are looking at right now.
Beliefs about yourself, your past, your future, your loved ones, your abilities, your chances.
In many ways, these rules determine much of your life.
Understanding the many unspoken rules by which you live — and then learning to change the ones that aren’t serving you — is a key part of individual therapy.
Change actually starts with acceptance.
You’re here because you want change — personally, relationally, professionally, emotionally.
So why will our work together probably start with some acceptance?
Because acceptance is actually the gateway to change. Lack of acceptance — of yourself, of others, of situations — may be one of the biggest things holding you back from what you really want.
Acceptance doesn’t mean agreeing with or continuing something. It just means giving up some of the ways you (and the rest of us) try to arm wrestle reality into submission.
Spoiler alert: Reality is like Sylvester Stallone’s character in the ‘80s arm wrestling movie Over The Top… it wins in the end. (And yes, there really was a melodramatic sports feature film about arm wrestling… Oh, the ‘80s…).
Once you get and start practicing the acceptance-to-change process, then things really do change.
From compassion to courage to meaning.
Once you are kinder to yourself, you will find the courage to make important changes by practicing new skills.
You will start taking better care of yourself in ways that don’t seem “selfish.”
You will experience and express emotions without feeling “weak.”
You will really start to understand what matters — not what you think or have been told “should” matter — and how to start having more of that in your life instead of sacrificing so much for others.
Your life will start to have meaning that matters to you and also benefits others.