A lot of people I work with call themselves “people pleasers”. On the surface, pleasing people sounds great, but it can become a problem when we go out of our way to do so, ignoring our own needs in the process. We might feel sheepish or frustrated by this tendency, but at the same time, we often feel like we can’t help it.

If we’re new to therapy, it can be daunting looking for a therapist for the first time. Where do we begin? How do we know who’s right for us? What do we even look for? Here are some ideas on how to get started.

Happy new year! I thought I’d start the year by reflecting on the top books I shared with people I worked with in 2023. These books vary in their perspective and approach, but they all have one thing in common: to help us fare better in our close relationships, whether with our parents, children, friends or partners. 

With the holidays approaching, I’m sure many of us are looking forward to festivities and family time. I’m also sure that for some of us, family gatherings might bring about more complex feelings – anxiety, dread, or even shame.

Fortunately, popular discourse around mental health in recent years is offering up a new understanding of mental health: that mental health is health. While it’s not our job to convince the men in our lives to seek help, we can let them know they’re not alone, and that plenty of research is out there confirming both the existence of mental health challenges and support services that address them.

Progress in therapy looks different for everyone, with many variants that shape its impact on a person’s life. These include the reasons the person seeks out therapy in the first place, their goals and expectations, and how comfortable they feel with the therapist. Each therapeutic journey is nuanced and can be hard to quantify, but bearing the following in mind can increase the chances of success.

When I invite people to share early memories, some may recount a story or two from when they were five or six years old. After, they might ask: “but that happened so long ago. How is it even relevant?” 

Being in your twenties these days is hard. I work with a lot of clients who are fresh out of college and new to the so-called adult world. From these clients’ stories there is sometimes an overwhelming sense of failure, if not a self-deprecating humour, around the idea of “adulting” – that in both a practical and existential sense they’re falling short of society’s expectations of being an adult.

“Oh, my god. I can’t believe I just said that. He probably hates me now.”

“Why am I so stupid? Why can’t I do anything right?”

“Wow, how do you not know something so basic?”

“What an idiot.”

Sound familiar? Whether on the giving or receiving end of these statements, we’ve all been there before. Shame can permeate our everyday interactions, be it in our own heads, at work, or at home. While it can often go unnoticed, it can still affect us deeply.