Am I Ready For Therapy?

The real question is in what way am I ready for therapy? It’s important to know how ready you are for change. No matter what stage of change you are at, you can still participate in therapy, but it may be helpful for you and your therapist to know where you’re at so that therapy can be effective. I want to clarify that there is no shame with where you are at and it’s important to be honest with yourself (and your therapist if you have one). The image below shows the stages of change:

When we talk about stages of change we tend to start with pre-contemplation and end with relapse, but as you see it is an upward spiral, so each time you “relapse” and move into pre-contemplation, growth has still occurred.

Pre-contemplation

In this stage, you aren’t even thinking about changing your behavior nor do you have any intention of changing your behavior. Basically you’re content with where you are. If you do enter therapy, you may just want someone to vent to and discuss life happenings (of course this is a generalization and you may have other motivations to be in therapy, and we’re happy to have you).

Contemplation

You may know that a problem exists, but you’re not really ready to change it. There may be lots of reasons for this, change can be scary or you may not have the time or energy to change the problem.  Again, you may want to be in therapy to vent or talk about life events or even talk about how annoying the problem is.

Preparation

At this point, you may have a plan on how you are going to change the behavior and you want to put in effort to change the behavior. In other words, you are preparing to make the change. You might not quite be at the point that you want to fully act on changing behavior, but you may be dabbling in changing the behavior. This may be when you think about going to therapy or book an appointment if you aren’t already actively in therapy (again it kind of depends).

Action

Exactly what it sounds like, you are actively engaging in modifying your behavior. At this point, you may be fully engaged in therapy and actively engaging in any therapeutic homework. Change is tough, but you’re doing it!

Maintenance

You’ve done most of the grunt work to change your behavior and now you’re maintaining the behavior, this may feel like coasting. You may just be reinforcing behavior in your therapy sessions and sometimes it may feel like you’re just venting or talking about life events because you feel content with the change you’ve made.

Relapse

Some old patterns of behavior may creep back in, but this doesn’t mean you’ve made full regression, in fact this means you are continuing to grow! This may feel frustrating, but the old behaviors may not be as intense or last as long as they did at first. While in therapy, you may still be reinforcing changed behavior and chatting as normal.

In all stages of change, you are progressing. This is all part of the growth and change cycle. No part of the cycle is better than another, although some may feel better than another, they are all part of the journey. As a therapist, I and all therapists, welcome you into therapy no matter the stage of change you align with.

By Ashley Smith Heinrich, PLMFT

Supervised by Lauren Bailey, LMFT