Frequently Asked Questions
Some signs you might benefit from therapy can be persistent emotional struggles - feeling worried or overwhelmed most of the time, even though situations change or feelings that seem too big to handle or come out of nowhere. You may notice recurring patterns of thoughts and feelings about situations or people across various aspects of your life, e.g. work, relationships, etc. Struggling to keep up with daily tasks, any unexplained physical ailments, heart palpitations, headaches, overworking, socially withdrawing, significant sleep or appetite issues, substance use, intrusive thoughts may also be signs you could consider therapy.
Basically, if the ebbs and flows of life are not seeming temporary or situational anymore or things are going beyond what you feel is okay, you should consider speaking to a professional.
Therapy is about more than just "thinking positive”; it's about:
Building Insight: Understanding why you feel or act a certain way.
Learning Skills: developing tools to manage emotions, navigate relationships, and improve the quality of your life.
Healing the past: addressing unresolved experiences that might still affect you.
Safe Exploration: having a neutral, supportive space to discuss your thoughts without judgment.
People who have experienced therapy share that beyond solving immediate concerns, therapy has helped them have deeper self-understanding and helped uncover the 'why' behind certain emotions or behaviours, making functioning in life a lot easier and pleasurable.
Psychologists are trained to understand human behaviour, emotions and mental health. They use research-backed techniques to understand and address your concerns effectively, whereas family and friends may offer well-meaning advice based on personal experience or opinion.
A professional is more likely to be unbiased, free from involvement in your life or those around you. This helps them be neutral without influence from a shared history. So, you can open up without worrying about hurting feelings, burdening someone or damaging relationships. Everything you share is confidential, creating a safe space to dig deeper into your challenges, patterns, or past experiences. Moreover, therapy time is entirely devoted to you and there is no expectation of reciprocity. They also meet so many other people, so their insights might be helpful in a more contemporary context.
While it may seem that sharing your innermost feelings with a stranger is odd, many people actually find it liberating to talk to someone whose only priority is your wellbeing and explorations of your concerns in depth and whose opinions can have no implication on your life, unless you choose it.
My training has primarily been in the psychodynamic modality, and I find its slow pace, potential for deep work, and respect for the unstructured psyche quite powerful. However, I also understand how it can feel too vague or alienating at times.
I am deeply drawn to Internal Family Systems (IFS) for the way it honours the multiplicity within us — the parts that protect, the parts that carry wounds, and the core self that holds compassion and clarity. It offers a structured yet gentle way of approaching inner conflict without pathologising it.
I also hold close an awareness of the social realities we live within — gender, family structures, caste, class, cultural expectations, systemic inequalities. Our distress does not exist in isolation from these forces. Healing, to me, must acknowledge not just the inner world, but the context in which that inner world was shaped.
I find the belief in self and the potential for growth within the humanistic tradition very empowering, and the existential tradition’s acute awareness of life’s fundamental truths - uncertainty, freedom, responsibility, mortality rather enlightening.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), when used thoughtfully, can serve as a practical tool to enhance self-awareness. Frameworks such as Transactional Analysis and the Window of Tolerance offer simple yet profound ways of understanding patterns and regulating emotional overwhelm.
A relational and attachment lens adds a rich complexity, with the potential to discover oneself in relationships in ways few other perspectives can offer.
Adding to that, my own experience with grief, pain, and life’s transitions has taught me that there is no single formula to healing, nor one school of thought that can work for one person across all their difficulties, let alone for many people across life stages.
More than anything, I believe it is the relationship between client and practitioner that heals. That remains my primary focus.
My blog post titled “We Are All a Little Crazy” elaborates this approach further.
Finding the right therapist for yourself is hard work! I am sorry that the previous experience was not great.
Sadly, there is really no formula to figure out if someone is going to be a good fit. You can try to find someone who meets your preferences for age, gender, location/online, any preferred approach, etc. You can ask your trusted family/friends/colleagues for referrals. After that, you can try to see their websites, social profiles, professional experience and notice how you feel after reading about them. If it seems like it might be a good fit, it would be worth a try. During your conversations, try to be as honest and clear as you can about yourself and your reservations. In sessions, if you like something and don't like something else, you can really tell your therapist! A good practitioner would not be offended and would probably be glad you can freely share what is on your mind. And they will use it to better cater to your requirements. And if they cannot, they will kindly tell you that too :)
(Note on referrals: there is an ethical requirement for no dual relationships and no conflicts among clients of a therapist. That means that your mother's therapist cannot be yours, because you are probably a character in her story and she in yours. A distant cousin's uncle may not be a conflict. It also means that your friend or aunt cannot be your therapist because they already have an existing relationship with you and that of an independent, objective therapist-client cannot be formed.)
Meeting once a week is the usual form in therapy. We can meet twice a week if you are experiencing high distress right now. Once in 10 days or once in 2 weeks is the usual maintenance frequency. I recommend we start with meeting once a week and decide further based on how we feel about it.
There is a reason behind this. Therapy sessions are typically scheduled once a week to strike a balance between consistency and practicality. This regular rhythm helps maintain continuity in the therapeutic process while allowing people time to reflect on discussions, insights, make observations and possibly implement a small change in their daily lives. Weekly sessions provide consistent support without fostering dependence, encouraging one to build autonomy in their personal growth. This frequency also prevents emotional overwhelm by pacing the exploration of challenging topics and fits well with most people’s schedules and financial capacities, making therapy both effective and sustainable. Meeting at a fixed time every week adds to this sense of continuity and consistency. Additionally, with many other competing priorities, it can feel like a task to carve out time for this and so a fixed slot helps to reduce the pain of decisions.
Having said that, it is also true that life can be unpredictable, and while a fixed slot also provides for contingencies of health and other emergencies; some people find more comfort in booking a slot in the week as per their variable schedule. So, we can also work in that manner - booking a slot from the list of available slots, and we do not need to discuss it every week.
Please write to me at abhilashagupta.therapy@gmail.com for any other questions or concerns.
