‘Therapy doesn’t work!’ she said…
‘No-one can help me. I give up. I’m stuck with no way out of this.’
Tell me, do you feel this way? It’s not like you don’t want help to get things sorted, is it?…
But the NHS provision is really limited and in the past when you’ve paid for help, it wasn’t right.
So now do you perhaps feel stuck and a bit lost?
Let me tell you the truth of it –
“You don’t need a therapist to overcome anxiety;
what you need is a Mentor.”
Here’s why…
The traditional therapy perception is that the therapist is in a position of authority. (There is a conditioning that their academic training makes the therapist supremely qualified to decide and define what is going on for you – and often gives you a label that serves to validate the therapist’s ability to explain your behaviour.)
Traditionally the perception perhaps is that the therapist will fix you… you pay for the insight and the therapist holds responsibility to sort things out for you, and even perhaps for your family too.
Yes, a mentor has qualification and training
But more than anything,
“A mentor has life experience.”
With regards to personal growth, a mentor shares their real-life experience of how they moved from feeling stuck to becoming unstoppable in their life. In supporting you to overcome anxiety, a mentor shares how they moved from experiencing excruciating anxiety…
most likely with panic attacks, hallucinations, flashbacks and all the other symptoms of anxiety,
to live their life now in a calm, relaxed, grounded, happy, confident way
to feel at peace within themselves.
“Cold… distant… closed…
Impersonal… superior”
are just a few of the words my clients have used to describe their experiences of the traditional therapy practice before finding their way to me.
Traditional models frown on a therapist sharing their personal story or their vulnerabilities.
Whereas as a mentor, working ethically with professional boundaries, I do share my vulnerability. I have experienced time and again, how this creates connection and always shines a guiding light.
Sometimes when just at the right moment I have shared an experience of vulnerability perhaps for example, with forgiveness, it can encourage my other clients to be brave enough to be vulnerable and allow themselves to heal.
Let’s be real here…
The only person who knows what’s going on for you is YOU.
Just because you can’t make sense of it doesn’t mean that it isn’t ‘your job’ to make sense of it. You don’t need someone else outside of you to try to tell you what’s wrong. All you need is the right guidance for you to explore this for yourself.
A mentor is someone who ‘gets it!’ She gets where you are at because she has been there too.
As a mentor I can help you to find your way through because I have the first-hand blueprint for what doesn’t work, and what really does.
So much more than…
Merely exploring your thoughts and feelings and reflecting back
A mentor helps you to create the dynamic change you seek using the life strategies and the tools to get you where you need to get; in the quickest and most effective way.
A mentor can help you in a rounded way that is ‘off-the-cuff’ and creative…
because unlike a traditional therapist, with a mentor, it is never script-led in a ‘one size fits all’ frame, nor is it limited to just one therapeutic approach dependent on the traditional therapist’s particular skillset.
What you need is someone shining the light alongside you, someone who is going to help you to decide the right way for you;
The living breathing proof that what the mentor says works… is because the mentor is already where you want to be within yourself and in your life circumstances too.
I’m daring to put my head above the parapet and say out loud what my clients tell me repeatedly – that the traditional model of therapy isn’t working.
The simple truth is you need a different approach to get a different result.
You absolutely CAN transform your life and how you feel in it. But only you can do it. No-one else can do it for you.
Food for thought? I really do hope so.
Anyway, enough for now.
Lisa Skeffington
Anxiety Expert – Anxiety Help Bournemouth & Christchurch, UK
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