10 Things My Therapist Says All the Time

Feel it to heal it

We work with a lot of over-thinkers in our practice, who don’t necessarily love hearing this.  They’ve become masters at understanding their feelings, but they prefer not to dwell on them.  They’ve reaped the maximum benefit of insight-oriented psychotherapy, they see the connection between having a parent who was emotionally distant and having a string of partners who aren’t ready to commit to a long-term future, and they’ve made a very logical game plan for breaking this pattern.  But sometimes it feels like something is missing.

Experiencing the full spectrum of human emotions, even distressing ones, even ones that make us feel vulnerable is part of how we heal. So many of us were taught that weakness, crying, bad, giving in, moping.

Facts aren’t feelings

The Pomegranate Institute specializes in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a type of therapy that emphasizes detaching and detangling from the thoughts you have. Just because the thought pops into your head, doesn’t make it true.  CBT just because you think it, doesn’t make it true. Alice (of Alice in Wonderland) even goes so far as to say: “Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

In our practice, we work with our patients on drawing a distinction between feelings and facts, sometimes you feel like a “useless waste of space” but this doesn’t make it true.  Part of our job is to help create a little bit of a buffer between these thoughts and your sense of sense and what you know to be true about yourself.

Find out before you flip out

In the eight episode of the third season of the infinitely quotable Ted Lasso, Ted is having a meltdown because he has leapt to the conclusion that Jake (the couples’ former therapist) is going to propose to Michelle (his ex wife) on their trip to Paris.  He is explaining his reasoning to the Diamond Dogs, who are at first sympathetic to how difficult its going to be for Ted to watch his ex-wife get re-married, but then they realize Ted is getting worked up over a hypothesis that he hasn’t actually confirmed, leading Trent to say: “Ted. You can't worry about something that hasn't happened yet. And Higgins to add: “Ooh, what he said. If anything, you should find out before you flip out”.

Confirmation bias is a kind of thinking error where we start to focus on information that confirms the bias we are already holding, while also discounting any evidence to the contrary.  “Finding out” would require us to slow down and try to collect information without attributing meaning to it, something that are, understandably, pretty bad at. 

In the end, Michelle doesn’t get engaged to Dr. Jacob (thank goodness) and Ted gets some much-needed redirection about enjoying his time with Henry rather than fixating on an outcome he can neither predict nor control.

Right now doesn’t mean forever

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy teaches us to be on the lookout for certain patterns in our thoughts called “thinking errors” that can exacerbate how crummy we feel about ourselves, others, and the world around us. Overgeneralization is a kind of thinking error where we make a rule or an expectation with a limited amount of information.  For example, if we’re struggling with a painful injury, we might have the thought “This is going to hurt forever” or if we’ve just been chastised by our boss we might have the thought “I never do anything right”. 

“Right now doesn’t mean forever” reminds us that the moment we’re in right now isn’t necessarily a representative sample of what our life has been like and will be like.  It’s a reminder to slow down and not make a prediction based on the single moment you’re in right now, especially if the moment is emotionally significant.

It’ll pass

We are unabashed Fleabag stans at TPI, and this last line from the hot priest is devastating in its degree of emotional honesty and quotability.  There is an acknowledgement that the love they share, while real, isn’t enough to change their circumstances (it’s God, isn’t it?). It also speaks to the idea that it doesn’t have to be permanent to be worthwhile. It will pass, but boy was it glorious at the time. 

The good stuff will pass, the bad stuff will pass, the hot priest reminds us to enjoy the moment we’re in without clinging on to it too tightly.

If you can name it, you can tame it

While we’re on the subject of Fleabag, for those of our patients who are “big readers with no friends”, and lovers of the fantasy genre, the notion that names have power is not a surprising one. 

Likewise, for our patients who attend any kind of 12 step programing, there is an emphasis placed on naming the nature of a problem as the first step in someone’s journey. 

In our work as a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, we place a lot of emphasis on identifying thinking errors as the first step in evaluating them for accuracy and then modifying them, or “catch it, check it, change it” if we’re being extra pithy.  The point being, regardless, of your fandom, or theoretical orientation, naming is an important part of the process. 

What is grief if not love persevering?

We did not have the Marvel Cinematic Universe saying something devastating about grief on our bingo card, but here we are! Few pop culture moments have made their way as deeply into the therapy space as the moment when Vision and Wanda are discussing the death of her brother, and Vision says: “Because it can't be all sorrow, can it? I've always been alone so I don't feel the lack. It's all I've ever known. I've never experienced loss because I've never had a loved one to lose. What is grief, if not love persevering?”

We’ve heard from countless palliative care and hospice social work colleagues who were floored by this scene when they first saw it and have continued to use it with their patients and families ever since. 

If it’s hysterical, it’s historical

We don’t love the inherent misogyny in the use of the word hysteria, but we do love an excuse to explain the etiology of this condition. Hysteria comes from the Greek word hystera for womb. The diagnosis pre-dates psychology, but was popularized by early psychoanalysts like Freud, who believed the physical suffering of women could best be explained by their unfertilized womb wandering around their bodies in search of sperm. If you were having migraines for example, it was because your womb had migrated to your head. The cure was sometimes rest or hypnosis, but more often a recommendation for pregnancy.

Colloquially, hysteria evokes a certain ungovernable emotional excess, and there is always an implied feminine quality to this unseemly display of emotion.

Buried under this pile of sexism, is a reminder that if we are having a reaction to something in the present that feels outsized, it may be because we’ve hit a pain point that is historical, and it is this historical pain point we need to revisit.

Nothing changes if nothing changes

Our friend Taylor over at TDHC Counseling Services (TDHC Counseling Services - Taylor Hilst Cardelli) loves this phrase because it points out our inherent resistance to change and reminds us that “if you want something different for yourself you *must* do something you haven’t done before, which may mean doing something outside of your comfort zone.”

Be curious not furious

Our very first social work supervisor passed this expression down to us and it remains a favorite, nearly fifteen years later. Curiosity is a powerful antidote to all sorts of grubby emotions, including anger that we’re a little too quick to jump to.

Since we’ve already opened the pop culture floodgates in this article, we’ll also point out that Ted Lasso does a beautiful monologue about curiosity while he trounces Rupert at darts in Rebecca’s defense during the first season, though he uses the Walt Whitman quote: “Be Curious, Not Judgmental” 

You’re not healing to be able to handle the trauma, you’re used to that, you’re healing to be able to handle the joy

This one is making the rounds on social media, and while we’ve seen it a few times, we haven’t been able to trace it to a specific content creator, so if you know, let us know, we’d love to give them credit!

We love this one, because it speaks to something we see in our practice every day, our patients who come from trauma are very practiced at it, they’re very comfortable and steady in disaster, even to the point of feeling like they thrive in it. Sometimes they are less comfortable with the notion of thriving in the calm. We tell our patients that we want them to retain the skill set of being steady in a crisis, while also being able to let their guard down in moments of true joy.

Did we miss any cliché but useful therapist catch phrases?



Does your therapist use a different phrase that you love, hate, or love to hate, but secretly love? Let us know! And if you’re looking for a therapist who will help you make real, sustainable changes while dropping the occasional zinger, reach out, we can’t wait to meet you!