What I Wish I Knew Before Starting Therapy
Ever wish someone had told you what therapy wasn’t before you took that first step?
Over the next two weeks, I’m pulling back the curtain and sharing 10 truths I wish I knew before starting therapy - the things that could’ve made the journey feel less overwhelming, more empowering, and way more doable.
This mini-campaign is my attempt as a now counsellor (once, client!), to smash the stigma around therapy, break down those walls of fear, and make taking that first step feel less like jumping into the unknown.
If you’ve ever felt confused, nervous, or downright scared about therapy - this is your space. Let’s make it easier for everyone to get the support they deserve. 💙✨
Here’s how you can join the #IWishIKnewThen conversation:
What do you wish you’d known before starting therapy? Drop your thoughts in the comments below or share them on social media with the hashtag #IWishIKnewThen. Your story could be the spark someone else needs to begin their own healing journey.
1. #IWishIKnewThen … that vulnerability enables freedom.
When I was training as a counsellor, I dreaded the weekly ‘Personal Development’ (PD) sessions. These were circles based on Carl Rogers' ‘Encounter Groups’, where we’d sit for an hour, at the start of class, and share our personal reflections - what we were going through, how we were feeling, and what we’d learned. I couldn’t think of anything worse than baring myself in front of classmates and tutors, people who were near strangers to me at that point. The fear of being exposed, of being seen for who I really was, kept me on edge every single week.
I’d rehearse in the shower, obsess over what to say, and avoid eye contact until I was almost forced to take my turn. The idea of revealing myself felt like a risk I wasn’t ready to take. What if they rejected me? What if they saw something they didn’t like? For me, the risk of vulnerability felt like the ultimate exposure - of not being enough.
Part of my training (as in many courses), we were required to see our own therapist to unpack issues or difficulties we held ourselves, as you can only take a client as far as you’ve been willing to go yourself (so my tutor used to passionately tell us). In those sessions, I often found myself curiously bringing my anxieties about PD - how unfair it felt, how it triggered my deepest insecurities. But my therapist had one constant message: “You’re safe. You’re okay.”
Those words stuck with me, and slowly, I began to understand that I had been living in a constant state of fear inside and outside of the classroom - not just about the world around me, but about how I would be perceived in it. I was terrified of being judged, misunderstood, or rejected for what I carried inside, for who and how I was. I wondered if I was good enough, if I was worthy of being seen.
But over time, with patience and practice, I began to see vulnerability differently. It wasn’t a risk to avoid - it was a door to liberation. By sharing my fears, my doubts, and my struggles, I learned that these things no longer had the power to define me. I realised that vulnerability was the key to growth and healing. It allowed me to step into my truth, messy and imperfect, and yet still be enough.
What I learned through this process is something I now bring into my practice as a counsellor: vulnerability isn’t something to fear. It’s the bridge to healing. It gives you the courage to face the parts of yourself you’ve been avoiding and helps you release the grip of shame and self-doubt. By showing up in a safe, supportive space, you can begin to let go of those fears and reclaim your sense of self.
For anyone considering therapy, know this: Vulnerability is the first step towards freedom. It’s not about being perfect or saying the “right” thing - it’s about showing up as you are and allowing yourself the space to heal. Therapy provides that space, where you can be seen and heard without judgment, where your voice, thoughts, and experiences are always valid.
If you’ve been holding back from seeking support because you fear what it might reveal about you - remember that you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be willing to be real. Therapy can help you process your fears and help you realise that you are safe and okay.
I wish I had known back then just how freeing it would be to let go of that fear, to allow myself to be vulnerable, and how much it would shape my personal and professional growth. Now, as a counsellor, I’m here to help others take that same step - into their own healing.
Are you ready to take that step?
If you're ready to open up and reclaim your freedom, I invite you to share something you wish you’d known about your own mental health journey before seeking help, either in the comments or by using the hashtag #IWishIKnewThen on social media (post it anywhere and i’ll find it and support it!)
The #IWishIKnewThen hashtag is all about the moments we wish we had understood before starting therapy - those insights that could’ve made the journey feel less intimidating and more empowering. Whether it’s about the power of vulnerability, the freedom in healing, or the importance of giving yourself permission to seek support - sharing these reflections helps break down the stigma and fear surrounding mental health.
So in this spirit, I’m inviting you to share your own ‘I Wish I Knew Then’ moments and join the conversation. Your story might just be the encouragement someone else needs to take their first step toward healing.
And if you’re considering therapy, remember this - you don’t have to have it all figured out to start. You just need to be ready to show up as you are.
2. #IWishIKnewThen … that therapy wasn't a danger, but a space for healing.
For years, I hesitated to start therapy. Despite feeling the pull to go, something inside me kept holding me back. Looking back, I realise that I was associating therapy with danger - not physical danger, but emotional and psychological danger. In the deeper recesses of my mind, therapy meant exposing myself, revealing my vulnerabilities, and facing the very things I feared most: rejection, criticism, and the ultimate discomfort of being seen for who I truly was.
I carried these fears with me like weights, hauling them around every day without realising how much they impacted my life. I was terrified that sharing my story, my feelings, and my thoughts with another person would lead to judgment or, worse, a confirmation of all the worst things I thought about myself. What if someone told me I was wrong for what I had felt? What if my actions were criticised? What if my hidden, “ugly” truths were exposed, and I was rejected for them? These fears created an overwhelming sense of danger - and I avoided therapy because it brought me face-to-face with that danger.
But, as it turns out, the “danger” I feared was a mirage. Therapy, and the brave act of sitting with a counsellor, turned out to be one of the most nurturing experiences I’ve ever had. Each week, I slowly began to realise that the kindness, empathy, and unconditional positive regard my therapist extended to me were exactly what my soul needed to heal. In that space, I was free to show up as I was, without the fear of judgment or rejection. My counsellor didn’t see my fears as “dangerous” or “wrong.” She saw them as part of my human experience, and she welcomed them.
The more I settled into that safe space, the more I started to feel the weight of my fears lift. I stopped jumping to attention when someone engaged with me, stopped feeling the need to “perform” or be “entertaining enough” to gain approval. I stopped fearing what others thought of me and, more importantly, I stopped defining my worth by others' perceptions. I began to accept myself, flaws and all. It wasn’t an overnight transformation, but little by little, I developed true confidence - not the superficial kind based on approval or external validation, but real, deep-rooted self-assurance.
For the first time, I trusted myself. I no longer viewed therapy - and by extension, the honest connection with another person - as something to fear. Instead, it became a tool for healing, a way to nurture the wounds I had been carrying around for so long. And that trust, that healing, didn’t just stay in the therapy room. It extended into my everyday life, where I began to feel more grounded and at peace with who I was.
I want you to know that therapy can do the same for you. If you’ve been holding back, fearing that it will confirm your worst fears about yourself or that it will be a painful, “dangerous” process, I want you to reconsider. Therapy isn’t about harm. It’s about healing. It’s about nurturing the parts of you that are ready to be seen and loved. Your journey toward self-acceptance can start today, just as mine did. And you don’t have to carry those heavy fears alone anymore.
3. #IWishIKnewThen … that shame didn’t define me and it could be healed.
Therapy helped me realise something I never thought possible: shame didn’t define me, and it could be healed. For so long, I held back parts of myself. When things mattered most, I’d temper down the emotion or the truth, afraid of what would happen if I let it all out. If I came close to being honest, I’d throw in a qualifier, like “It’s not a big deal,” or “I’m just being stupid,” or “It’s pathetic.” I was constantly protecting myself from feeling too much, downplaying things to avoid the pain of owning them.
My therapist saw this. She noticed how I’d dismiss my feelings, how I’d cover my vulnerability with jokes or polite smiles, or how I’d shrug things off like they didn’t matter. And when I said something self-defacing, when I put myself down or tried to invalidate my emotions, she didn’t let it slide. She would gently challenge those words, those layers of shame, and it made me realise just how deeply I’d been holding onto it.
She saw me - really saw me - and it gave me permission to finally let my guard down. She helped me access parts of myself I’d hidden for years: the anger, the vulnerability, the parts that felt not good enough or rejected, the parts I’d long been conditioned to hide. Slowly, I started to let those parts speak, even when it was hard. She created a space where I didn’t have to keep up the tough front I’d built for so long. I didn’t have to be the “adult” or the one who had it all together. I could just be me - even the messy, imperfect parts.
When things felt too hard or too scary to say, she didn’t push. She just held space for me, letting me know that I didn’t have to rush or force anything. She validated the parts of me that felt too painful to put into words. Even when I couldn’t speak the pain directly, she spoke to it in a way that made me feel safe enough to explore it.
Bit by bit, the shame I’d carried for so long started to lose its grip on me. I saw that I never needed to exist in the dark, hiding from it. Therapy helped me bring all those hidden parts into the light, and in doing so, I began to heal. Each step was like turning over a stone, uncovering what had been buried and hidden away. With each step, I felt freer - more authentic, more me. Slowly, I learned that I didn’t have to hide. I didn’t need to carry that weight anymore. I could be myself, whole and real, without shame.
So many of us carry repressed shame from experiences that stretch far back in our lives, contributing to a 'Life Script' - a set of beliefs and behaviours that shape how we see ourselves and the world around us. This script, often rooted in the past, becomes a way of being that’s faulty, disproportionate, or even self-punishing. Over time, it can drive us inward, even if we don’t fully recognise it. Whether it leads us to perform as the gregarious, magnetic extrovert - the person who's everyone’s friend but still feels restless and unsettled inside - or to retreat into the smallest versions of ourselves, paralysed and afraid to show up. Shame takes root, metastasizes, and embeds itself into our very being. It locks us in, often until we face it head-on.
We can take our time - going slowly is often necessary - but face it, we must. Only by bringing that darkness into the light can we start to free ourselves from its grip, and in doing so, we realise we never had to live in those shadows in the first place.
As a counsellor, my role is to help others bring their shame and pain into the light - to face it, heal it, and replace it with self-compassion, self-acceptance, and freedom. It’s like wearing a winter coat that was once needed but has become far too uncomfortable for the season. We can learn to "take it off" - to shed the weight that no longer serves us, to embrace what’s next (which is life worth living).
4. #IWishIKnewThen … that everything is hard before it’s easy.
As I drove the usual route home from counselling, a deep sickness settled in my stomach.
The effort to fight off existential dread loomed at the edges of my consciousness - and sometimes failed, engulfing me. Whatever the outcome of that fight, its shadow usually lingered - like a companion I never consented to share this part of life with.
“I don’t want to go there”
“Why do I feel like shit all the time?”
“I’m sick of picking things apart and looking into shit”
“What more is this process going to reveal? How much more of that can I take?”
“I’m waiting for the break-through moments that everyone else seems to have – where is mine??”
“I felt better before I started?!”
These were the familiar sentences I’d find myself breathing through gritted teeth, my voice thin and stifled - especially on drives like this one home.
I was 20 hours into therapy – 20 weeks – 1000 minutes.
Why was I feeling like this? When would it change?
I was sick of feeling like shit – and I was sick of talking about it.
Don’t get me wrong – I found some counselling sessions utterly releasing. Euphoric, even. But a lot of the time, I left sessions feeling like a bewildered child that no one cared about and had no future that was worthwhile. So maybe, what was the point anyway?
There is a common phrase in life: “It gets worse before it gets better”. At this point in my journey, I didn’t care about the hope at the end of the tunnel – at the end of the journey - I just wanted someone to pass me a torch so I could find my way out of the blackness I kept (voluntarily?) visiting.
I remember saying this to my therapist: “I’m just feeling more and more like shit? And I feel like I keep circling through the same topics over and again. You must be so bored of me?”
My therapist smiled at me. In the gentle, titled-head way that she always did, that made me feel she held some kind of wizard-like vision into the future – that everything was going to be ok in the end. Her expression affording me the comfort to take a deep breath and sink back into my body.
“It takes 20 hours to build a therapeutic relationship”, she began explaining, “and 40 before the dark stuff starts coming out – you’re doing just fine”.
I pressed my lips together, as if biting more words that hadn’t yet even arrived. A compulsion to “pour out” from me, but not knowing where from… or even what?
She went on to say something like, “Revisiting these experiences is incredibly important because the events and their meanings are tied to the same neural pathways. When you put one issue - or part of it - to rest, the learning hasn’t yet fully translated to other areas of our lives. That’s because we’re still in the process of identifying, challenging, and healing those neural pathways. Bit by bit, story by story, we turn over each stone.”
My ok-ness started to return.
“This is why it might feel repetitive to you – because you’re challenging and healing the same wound throughout times and phases across your life. That is exactly the work, and its normal for this to ‘feel like shit’ at times”
This message stayed with me throughout my time in therapy, and kept me returning – that each chunk of pain, was another stone turned, another moment of healing laid, and another new [neural] pathway forward – and out. No torch needed.
When training as a therapist myself - and undertaking the obligatory personal counselling I’m referring to, as many courses mandate - I listened to a lot of Jordan B. Peterson’s podcast. He’s a truly inspiring clinical psychologist, author, and speaker - and who I still want to be when I grow up (despite being already grown).
On one of his talks Jordan discussed how we grow in direct proportion to the challenges we have the courage to face – to the monsters we’re willing to fight – the weight we’re voluntarily willing to take on. Like in the Bible story ‘David and the Goliath’ of which he compared this principle to.
And it’s true – the evidence of this, proved to me that it was true.
By going into the “pits” and sharing what hurt me most - what I carried heavily in my chest, all the tangled wiring knotted inside me - and metaphorically vomiting it out into a safe and trusted space, I shrank the weight of it. And in turn, it grew me.
With each revelation, the motivation to “turn up” - even when I didn’t want to - became its own kind of healing. Not the kind that hardens into scar tissue, lingering on the skin as a marker of where I’d been. Instead, the marks of pain gradually puffed away - silently, softly, almost without notice - into invisible, glittering dust. In their place, a black void bloomed - a safe kind - and I grew into that space, slowly taking up its room.
I laughed louder.
I became less activated by experiences that previously would have triggered me.
I noticed greater comfort and ease when maintaining a personal boundary.
I worried less about how I looked or what others thought, and began more naturally leading with what felt right for me.
I ruminated less, and put my “stamp collection” away of past hurts and grievances.
I took up more “space”, and life started to feel lighter.
I felt lighter.
I became grateful for the pits I traversed through – in life and through therapy – because without them, the monsters would always have remained bigger than me, and I would always have remained small.
I’ve found that sometimes, yes - it can feel worse before it gets better, because healing requires sustained effort and courage. And it’s through that courage that you discover something even more freeing: everything worth having feels hard before it becomes easy.
That means “easy” is coming - if you trust yourself to survive the “hard,” knowing you don’t have to face it alone.
For that, I will always be grateful to my experience of therapy. It’s also one of the reasons I was motivated to finish my training - so that today, I can help others just as I once needed help myself.
Everything is hard before it’s easy.
My plan was to complete my 10 #IWishIKnewThen moments and share each one with you within two weeks - adding a new story every couple of days. I didn’t keep to that deadline.
I told myself it was because the past few weeks had been busy with the relaunch of www.theroompsy.com - which is true - but I also wonder if it’s because this very act of sharing - of peeling back the curtain on therapy to empower others to find the courage to attend - still feels incredibly hard at times. So, procrastination won, as a way to protect myself from vulnerability.
And that’s okay. We take a pause, and we keep going. Just like we can in therapy too.
If things feel “big,” that’s not a reason to stop or run. Take a breath, offer yourself some compassion, reflect on what might be happening inside, and come back to your source.
If you’re wondering about therapy, hesitant or scared, know this: the bravery it takes to show up is the first step toward growth. I’m sharing these moments not just for me, but to encourage you - because the hardest parts can also be the most transformative.
Trust yourself and trust the journey – I believe in you, and I believe in us.
5. #IWishIKnewThen… that I could control what I shared, when, and how.
Riddled with red tape, legal caution, ethical molehills, and policy landmines, sometimes everything I wanted to say in therapy was everything I wasn’t sure I could say.
While undergoing private counselling, I was working in a deeply toxic employment environment - one that demanded different types of confidentiality, discretion, and ethical caution. Ironically, it was also the very thing causing me such intense distress. I was navigating tyrannical personalities, office politics, and scandals that shook me to my core.
There were weeks I couldn't get through without crying - stretched far beyond what was safe or sustainable. But I was trapped: needing to pay a brand-new mortgage and locked into a role that, at the time, was the only one offering the hours and pay combination I required to continue studying and training at the demanding level my counselling qualification required.
Rock, meet hard place.
This organisation was ducking safeguarding investigations, burying complaints, and treating staff like disposable Kleenex. Subsequently, once a week, I’d find myself sitting in my therapist’s room with the static of stress humming through the fractured ravines of my mind.
I’d tell stories - half-told, deliberately vague, dancing around the truth.
I was terrified of naming names. Careful with every detail. Concerned that, in a small town and an adjacent industry, someone might know someone. Someone might overhear or connect the dots. And worse - that I might be judged. For what I was tolerating. For the mess I was in. For the way I was trying to survive it.
It all boiled down to the same thing: a fear of being seen.
The deep internal conflict between needing to speak and fearing what would happen if I did - mirrored again and again.
At my counselling progression interview into the final year of my Level 4 qualification, my tutor reflected, almost annoyed in tone:
“I just find you… very vague. Who is Sam?”
A colleague around the same time had said,
“You don’t really talk about yourself.”
A training peer that following academic year gave me a compliment and offered a personal question. I immediately flipped the focus back to her instead, artfully. She noticed - kindly calling out the deflection.
The signs were there. Piling up.
Was I really that chiffon?
The truth is: my pursuit of “what’s next” had swallowed me whole. I was churning through client targets, breaking down barriers to advocate for the people I supported. Meeting deadlines, producing criteria essays and placement journals. Reading. Studying. Developing skills. Reflecting. Goal setting.
More, more, more, more.
Which meant: less and less and less of me.
I had become my work. My strife.
And I couldn’t even talk about it - not safely.
Because parts of it were genuinely dangerous to talk about - either for my job security, or because of the psychological cost it meant to my wellbeing.
I was constantly going toe-to-toe with Managers, Heads of Operations, Directors - challenging dysfunction in order to protect my clients, or just to get the basics of my job done. Boundaries were constantly being infringed upon. This stress caused me to ping-pong between resilience, fortifying, and powerful swathes of achievement, to complete masked collapse and bewilderment.
One time, I remember breaking down in a truly authentic moment in a ‘Personal Development’ circle session in one of my counselling classes (if you haven’t already read the Part 1 of this article, this is where my counselling training class would talk about what’s going on with them and how they’re affected, amongst whatever else was resonant for them at that time), crying almost uncontrollably: “Why can’t they see me?
This comment was about something very specific that had happened during an unsafe incident at work, where I had been placed physically at risk – however, this outpour wasn’t really about that – it was about more broadly, why can’t people see me?
And the answer, really, was simple: it’s because I didn’t want to be seen.
That contradiction had been at play the whole time - and I was just starting to realise how much it was shaping me.
I’d become enmeshed with the dysfunction of my workplace. Their demand for silence, surface-level positivity, and compliance tapped directly into my deepest wounds: invisibility, mistrust, self-protection. I didn’t feel safe - not at work, not in my relationships, not even in therapy.
Eventually, I realised that what I was doing – and therefore what I was asking of my poor therapist – was ridiculous. I was tying myself up in greater and greater knots to gloss over or mask my reality, what was happening, and how it was happening for me – that I could barely be concrete and specific, and therefore how on earth could I tackle something I wasn’t allowing myself to verbalise?
Shame. Fear. Lack of safety. Lack of self-trust and that in others.
I took a risk and broke through the imaginary tape I’d diligently tucked my toes so cautiously behind for so long: “I’m sorry, am I allowed to say names? I feel so scared about saying really what’s going on because this is a small town and I’m so worried about who might know who, and what might happen, and…and… and…”
Waterfall. What-ifs. Panic.
I had been holding in so much, for so long, I’d lost sight of my right to exist in this space. Of my right to use my voice.
My therapist, gently and warmly, reassured me: “Yes, you can absolutely say names here. Everything is confidential within the limits of our contract.”
My shoulders released.
Of course I could say all of it.
I knew the very specific limits already - we’d covered them in class:
The Children’s Act;
The Terrorism Act;
Money laundering, trafficking (drugs or people);
Serious risk to self or others.
That was it.
I could fucking say the names I needed to say, to detail my pain and my truth.
I could fucking express how much this was hurting me – taking from me – pressing me down.
I could expose these wounds, and it would be safe for her to see.
I cried again, just like I had in the ‘Personal Development’ circle - unfiltered, uncontrolled. I jumped back to how I felt judged by my tutor in my progression interview – that I felt unfairly labelled and unseen for the risks and honesty I had shared, especially when that had felt utterly excruciating. That the effort, the risk - and at the time - what it took from me to do it (before I felt the pay-off of doing do) left me feeling unseen and unappreciated.
“Maybe you could tell her how that impacted you?” my counsellor gently offered.
I folded everything I had – legs and arms tightly bound together.
“No, no, no. I couldn’t do that!” I pushed it away.
We explored it and played with the idea. I didn’t challenge this in the end – and Tansley, if you’re reading this, I hugely appreciate what you called out, even though it was hard to hear. But I did challenge other areas of my life that was tethered to the same wound.
Through counselling support and my training, I had learned that my Self-Image and Self-Concept were not in alignment at that time. I could speak clearly, forthrightly and powerfully on the behalf of others, but for myself, that felt too much.
I had bright pink hair at the time - attention-grabbing, loud. But I couldn’t bear being the centre of attention.
I could lead teams, negotiate with services, handle crises. But coffee with an old friend made me sick with butterflies; wanting to cancel last-minute.
Dichotomies. Splits. Inconsistencies - underlying unsafety.
During this session, my counsellor challenged me but also offered softness. Explaining how many events in my life had involved betrayals to trust and re-shuffling of landscapes I hadn’t anticipated. Therefore, trust and openness – truth and honesty, was risk.
Therefore, having a voice - existing - without a plan, without a back-up, without certainty… felt like impending annihilation.
My counsellor reassured me that, whilst it’s an area of work I deserved to be free from, it was something to do so gently and gradually, with large measures of self-compassion. She affirmed that I was certainly doing the work of sharing and exploring thoroughly within my sessions with her, but that trust and safety were ultimately paramount. There was no rush, pressure, or expectation. Baby steps were still steps forward – and standing still for moments didn’t mean going backwards. That any and all of this is ok, and exactly the process.
I could share what I felt safe to, when and if, it felt ok to do so – with gentle challenge, a safe environment, and encouragement.
I could control what I shared, when, and how. And I could do so in my sessions about my work, and more broadly in life with my wider relationships; poking my head out and going back in, if I needed to. Bit by bit, sensing it out on my own terms.
There was no rush, pressure, or expectation to blurt everything out in therapy – and doing so would have caused harm.
In a podcast episode of ‘The Counselling Tutor Podcast’ (an invaluable resource for training counsellors!) host Rory said that if you prise open the petals of a flower because you’re eager to see it bloom – to see its beauty – you will damage the flower, and it will never open and blossom the way it was meant to. And that the same principal is applied to humans and personal growth. That if a therapist places pressure on you to “do”, “share”, and “be” before someone is ready, this isn’t helpful – its harm – and its then about the counsellor’s agenda, not your therapeutic journey.
It was through the quiet patience and care my counsellor offered that I was eventually able to open up - to test out different relationships in my life, to speak my truth, and to share more authentically. I stopped fearing what might happen if I opened my mouth and expressed what truly mattered - what was impacting me. And in doing so, life became more colourful again. My body felt lighter, more limber. Anxiety became like an estranged distant relative, tucked away in the far corridors of my past - so distant, it became hard to remember what it ever felt like at all.
Therapy, however, is not a magic fix. It takes faith in yourself and the process, consistency, and intentionality. The courage to tread gently, and the patience to trust that you are worthy of the time it takes to arrive where you truly belong.
As someone who navigated this myself, learned to trust, be free, and live far more largely, I now help and support individuals that are just as fearful as I once was, to find their voice. Because I was afforded the safety and autonomy to test out mine, gently.
If you want to work with a counsellor who “gets it”, reach out to me and learn more, here.
If you're ready to explore therapy and work through your own 'I Wish I Knew Then' moments, reach out today to book a session.
I’m here to support you every step of the way.
Let's create a safe space for others to learn, grow, and begin their own healing process. 💬✨
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