I often speak about the barriers to getting effective support and treatment for mental health struggles, but one of the least discussed factors are the various types of resistance we produce ourselves. That resistance stops many of us getting exactly the sort of help we want.
For many people, this resistance is a continuation of childhood stories. We might want support, nurture, help and care, but then we throw up our own obstacles that make our challenges even greater. This is not only ironic, but deeply tragic.
One of the greatest barriers to getting help is the experience of shame – and it is completely unnecessary. Understandable? Yes. But shame is just part of a deeper series of programs many of us had embedded in us in childhood and which as adults we can relinquish – and in fact need to – if we’re going to find any sort of relief and freedom.
People looking for my help are best served by first developing a degree of detachment from their own struggles, and in that therapeutic distance, they can then see that we are often faced with a double bind when seeking help for mental health struggles through either online or in-person counselling.
We have to take profound personal responsibility for how we are, how we operate, what is alive within us, and how that affects our experience of life as well as our relationship to others and the world outside. At the same time, none of us had any choice in the circumstances into which we were born, our family system of origin, the socio-cultural and economic context into which we were born and reared. We also cannot blame ourselves for our earlier unconsciousness in which programs and patterns played out in whatever difficulties we’ve experienced and that propelled us to seek support.
Navigating this double bind requires maturity. That maturity is fostered by that sense of detachment from our own struggles which also makes it more possible for us to find a path through them.
Acknowledging how things actually are is the very first step. No one chose to be the way they are. No one chose to experience the difficulties they have faced. But now – if we want the chance to live a different way – it’s our responsibility to do something about it.
Into that situation we must then insert the understanding that shame itself is a deep program that – like so many others – simply cannot be served. That’s the correct approach to many of the mental formations that intervene when getting help. Fear, self-loathing, avoidance, resistance to authority, and so many more – they are impediments. They do not serve your higher intentions. They cannot be negotiated with, and the only real way those programs can be replaced is by no longer performing as they’d have you act. That requires dedicated attention and effort.
And so we understand that shame arises when we consider therapy. It’s a useful experience to bring to the counsellor as well so that it can be addressed and set aside. Therapists who know what they’re doing will often start with the client’s resistance – the obstacles in the way to effective treatment – because progress isn’t possible until those defences come down.
If we instead accept the degree of our own brokenness, we no longer have to apologise or defend. We no longer have to avoid or deflect or minimise or “suck it up” or continue to suffer in isolation. Help is there for the asking.
That is the first step in the greater work.