The Process

"Why Therapy Feels Hard Sometimes"

There is a version of therapy people expect before they start — a calm room, a listener, relief at finally being heard, gradual improvement from session to session. Sometimes it works like that. Often it does not.

Therapy can be uncomfortable. It can be confusing. It can feel like you are going backwards. You can leave a session feeling worse than when you arrived, or spend a week unsettled by something that came up in the room. You can sit through sessions wondering whether anything is actually happening.

None of this means therapy is not working. Some of it is a sign that it is working — at a depth that surface-level sessions do not reach.

"I Don't Feel Like I'm Making Progress"

Progress in therapy is not linear and it is rarely obvious while it is happening. The internal shifts that therapy produces often become visible only in retrospect — a different response to a situation that used to derail you, a conversation you handled differently, a pattern you noticed before it took hold.

If you are waiting to feel better week by week, session by session, you may be measuring something that is not the point. The question is not whether you felt better after today's session. It is whether, over time, you are understanding yourself and your life differently.

That said, if several months have passed and nothing has shifted at all, that is worth discussing with your therapist directly. The therapeutic relationship itself is a place where important things can be said, including that you are not sure the work is moving.

"I Don't Know What to Talk About"

This is one of the most common experiences people have in therapy, and one of the most useful.

Not knowing what to talk about is not a failure to prepare. It is often the beginning of something. The mind tends to protect itself from what is most difficult by keeping it vague, or by covering it with more comfortable material. The experience of blankness — "I have nothing to say today" — often sits just above something that is harder to say.

A good therapist will not fill that silence with suggestions. They will stay with it, and sometimes what emerges from the silence is more significant than anything that was planned.

If you regularly find yourself not knowing what to say, that is worth noting as part of the work, not dismissing as a sign that therapy is not right for you.

"I Feel Worse After Sessions"

This is perhaps the most disconcerting experience in therapy, and one of the least talked about.

Difficult sessions stir things up. A conversation that touches on something real — a grief that has not been processed, a pattern that has been running for years, a truth about yourself or your life that has been avoided — does not resolve neatly in fifty minutes. You carry it out with you. For a day or two, or sometimes longer, things can feel more present, more raw, than they did before.

This is not a sign that therapy is damaging you. It is a sign that the work is making contact with something that matters. The question is not whether the session was comfortable, but whether the material it opened is worth working through.

If you feel consistently destabilised, or if the feeling of being worse does not settle, that is worth raising with your therapist. There is a difference between productive discomfort and genuine distress, and a good therapist will help you hold that line.

The Sessions You Almost Did Not Attend

It is worth paying attention to the sessions you almost cancelled.

Resistance in therapy is real. The mind will find reasons not to go — you are too busy, you are tired, you do not have anything to discuss, things are actually fine right now. These reasons are sometimes legitimate. But they are also sometimes the mind protecting itself from something it knows is close.

The sessions that feel hardest to attend are often the ones that go somewhere important. Not always — sometimes you cancel and it is fine. But the pattern of avoiding therapy when something significant is approaching is common enough to be worth noticing.

If you find yourself repeatedly on the verge of stopping — not because therapy feels useless but because it feels like too much — that impulse itself is worth exploring in the room.

Resistance Is Part of the Work

This is particularly true in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapy, where the expectation is that resistance will emerge and that examining it is part of what produces change.

When a person begins to approach something they have not been able to think about clearly — a loss, a pattern, an aspect of their history — the mind will often push back. This can look like boredom in sessions, irritation with the therapist, a sudden sense that therapy is pointless, or a compelling urge to leave. These are not signs of failure. They are the process.

Naming resistance to your therapist — "I have been dreading coming today" or "I am not sure why, but I do not want to talk about this" — is often one of the most productive things you can do. It moves what was happening beneath the surface into the room, where it can be worked with.

What to Do When Therapy Feels Hard

• Say so. Tell your therapist that something feels off, that you feel stuck, that you are not sure this is working. The therapeutic relationship can hold that conversation. In fact, it needs to.
• Stay with the discomfort a little longer. Discomfort in therapy often means proximity to something real. It is not always a sign to stop.
• Distinguish between hard and harmful. Productive therapeutic work is sometimes uncomfortable. It should not leave you feeling consistently destabilised, shamed, or unheard. If it does, that is a different matter.
• Give it time. Some of the most significant changes from therapy are not visible until months after a particular piece of work. The fruits are often delayed.

Paul Reid is a PACFA registered psychotherapist with more than 15 years of clinical experience, offering online therapy across Australia. If you are in therapy and finding it difficult, or if you are considering starting and want to understand what to expect, you can learn more about the approach at counsellingtherapymelbourne.com.au.

For more on the therapeutic approach used in this practice, visit the psychoanalytic therapy page.