Finding a Therapist in Fairfax, VA: Five Surprising Ways Therapy Can Improve Your Life (A Guide for Overwhelmed, Over Functioning Women)

Why Finding a Therapist in

Find a Therapist in Fairfax, VA Today!

Fairfax, VA Matters

From the outside, your life looks amazing. You’re put together, you’re poised, you stay on top of things (well, the important things anyway), and you do it all with a smile. Of course, you have stress – everyone does! But as far as anyone can see, you cope well enough, and you just keep going.

But inside, you are struggling. Because while your life looks amazing, it feels oppressive. Because you spend so much time and energy tending to and anticipating others needs that you sometimes forget that you have needs of your own. And it’s exhausting! If this sounds like you, therapy can help.

In this article, we are going to explore 5 surprising, research-informed ways therapy can be useful beyond simply “having someone to talk to” (although that part is good too!). Therapy can help us build a better, more compassionate relationship with ourselves, create healthier relationships with others in our lives, and provide tools to help us to cope in productive ways when things get hard. Because if there is one thing we know about life, things will always, eventually get hard!

(A quick note about finding a therapist: There are lots of different kinds of therapists. You will want to look for someone who is licensed wherever you will be located at the time of your sessions. Common degrees you might see are PhD, PsyD, LMFT, and LICSW. For example, I have a PhD in Clinical Psychology, and am licensed in Virginia, Washington DC, Massachusetts, and California. Therapists specialize in all kinds of things and finding someone who is a good fit for you, both in terms of their specialization and their personality and connection is vital. Don’t be afraid to check out multiple therapists until you find the right one for you! I will write another post about this process soon).

So, without further ado, here are 5 surprising ways that therapy can make a difference in your life (cue drumroll!).

1. Greater Emotional Clarity and Self Compassion

   One of the things that a good therapist can help you to do is to better understand the reasons why you might react the way you do to the people, situations, or challenges that you encounter. Most of us learned about feelings when we were children, but we may not have been taught to really identify, honor, and be in connection with our emotions. In fact, social psychologist Brené Brown, in a survey of over 7,000 people, found that most people can only identify 3 emotions (sadness, happiness, and anger) while actually feeling them (Atlas of the Heart, 2021).

   
   

   Even for those of us who are more attuned to our emotions, we often discount them when other people are involved. We do this for many reasons, but the simplest one is that, at some point when we were younger, we learned that centering and anticipating other people’s emotions protected us. It may have protected us from others’ anger, or from their rejection, or from their disdain, or from something else entirely. But either way, discounting our own feelings kept us safe and it kept us feeling loved, and to a child, those things are existential – there is nothing more important.

   
   

   Sometimes people worry that dwelling on the past will keep us stuck there. But the reality is that we all carry the lessons that we learned and the wounds that we accumulated as children into our adult lives. And that is one of the reasons that therapy can be so helpful in getting us unstuck. Because a therapist has the benefit of a birds’ eye view, they can help you to make connections that may not have been obvious to you before. The more we understand where our wounds came from, the more compassion we can have for ourselves for being wounded in the first place. And amazingly, the more compassion we have for ourselves, the more those wounds heal.

   
   

   When we do that healing work of sitting with our emotions and building self-compassion, suddenly we find that our lives are no longer being run by the terrified 8-year-old who thinks she is unlovable or by the angry 5-year old who is worried everyone will leave. When we break the patterns that were formed to protect us from a life we are no longer living, we begin to find that we have more choices about how to respond and interact, even in situations that are difficult or demanding. And that is a beautiful thing.

   
   

   Surprising outcome: increased self‑compassion leads to healthier choices

2.    Reduced Burnout Through Boundary Setting and Prioritization

Women in Western cultures are socialized to be carers. We are taught that it is selfish to consider our own needs when someone else needs something from us. But the reality is that living a selfless life (literally, a life without self) is not sustainable. It is exhausting.

Even the most giving, most compassionate, most caring women are still just human beings – and all human beings have needs. Whether those needs include more time alone, or connection to loving others, or someone else to make dinner and clean the kitchen, or permission to say ‘no,’ or something else entirely (anyone else need a cookie, or is that just me?), if those needs don’t get met, we become overwhelmed and burned out.

But (and here is the key): other people cannot read our minds! If we never learn to ask for what we need, we are likely never to get it. And then we become resentful and tired and more and more miserable. And we think there is no other way.

Therapy can help you find another way.

A good therapist will help you practice setting and holding healthy boundaries in your life. They will also help you to work through the impacts on your relationships as you begin to do this.  Because some people will support you and praise you for speaking up and not expecting them to read your mind. Others – the ones who have been benefitting most from your lack of boundaries – may freak out because they don’t want the status quo to change. Either way, therapy is a place to work through those reactions so you can decide how you want to manage those relationships.

Ultimately, you are not responsible for other people’s reactions to your reasonable boundaries. All you are responsible for is being clear about what you need and saying so kindly. Clear and kind – that’s it.  Everything else is out of your hands!

Surprising benefit: even small boundary shifts can dramatically reduce emotional load and increase quality of life

3.    Improved Decision Making and Confidence

Have you ever sat and thought about something for so long that it just becomes more confusing the longer you sit with it? Have you ever replayed a conversation in your mind wondering whether you said or did something wrong or wishing you could go back and change it? Ever go back and forth over a major (or minor!) decision and feel like you may never get unstuck?

Women in our culture are socialized not to trust ourselves, and this makes knowing your own mind feel really challenging sometimes. 

Think about it:

·      we are taught to ignore our hunger signals so our bodies will be smaller

·      we are taught to quiet our opinions so that our voices will be smaller

·      we are taught to ignore our needs and tend to those of others instead

·      we are taught that our intuition – one of the greatest gifts we have – is something to be mocked and dismissed

Therapy can be a place where we get to explore our inner knowing again. Where we can use experiential learning and practical exercises to explore our values, build trust with our internal voice, and try out new ways of being. So that when we do have decisions to make, we can have confidence in our process, knowing that, above all, we are being true to ourselves.

Surprising benefit: therapy increases trust in your own judgment and reduces the need to seek validation from others

4.    Better Stress Management with Sustainable Tools

Look, life is stressful for everyone. Going to therapy won’t stop that from being true. But a good therapist can teach you a ton of evidence-based techniques for managing that stress, and some of them can be lifechanging. 

For example, mindfulness has become kind of a buzz word over the last decade or so. But did you know that as little as 12-minutes a day of mindful meditation practiced over a month or more can actually start to change your brain structurally?  We all walk around with a baseline level of anxiety in our bodies – some of us are just built more anxious than others, and some of us have grown to be that way because of Trauma or trauma or just life. What regular mindfulness practice does is to help decrease that baseline, so that when stress happens (and it will happen!), you have more capacity to absorb it without feeling like you are going to burst.

Now, there are a million ways to practice mindfulness, and some will feel great to you, and some will make you want to scream. A good therapist will work with you to experiment with which tools are a good fit for you, not just happens to be trendy at the moment. And they can help you to figure out how to fit these tools into your insanely busy life – because most of us can find 12 minutes a day, just maybe not all at once!

The same goes for any other kinds of tools too. A good therapist can help you to find the right tools to help you get organized, or wind down for sleep, or be mindful about eating in a way that aligns with your values (mindless bingeing in front of the TV anyone?). They can even help you to find the right tools to help change your relationship patterns and notice when you are engaging in ways that don’t serve you. All of this is way harder to do alone – that’s why therapists have therapists too!

Surprising benefit: mastery of a few micro-strategies can change our day-to-day experience of how stressful our lives feel

5.    Long‑Term Habit Change and Life Rebalancing

Most people seek out therapy when something is so wrong or so hard or so overwhelming that we can’t ignore it anymore. Our lives are busy and our To Do lists are long and making that call or sending that email isn’t usually at the top of the list. Until it is. Trust me, I’ve been there, I get it.

The trouble is, this can leave folks feeling like therapy is only for when we are in a crisis. Like we only deserve to set aside and pay for that space if there is no other option. But therapy can be so much more than that.

Little by little, over time, you will notice that the work you do in the therapy room leads to other changes in your life. You may notice better sleep, or lower stress, or less pain, or more laughter. You may notice better relationships, or less self-criticism, or more self-love. You may notice more joy. And more meaning.

Staying in therapy past the end of a crisis allows you to form new habits, create new patterns, and solidify new ways of being that can serve you for life. A good therapist will celebrate with you when you achieve a goal, but they will also plan with you for the next time things don’t go so well. They will keep you accountable and be your cheerleader as you go out into your life to do the hard things you have been working on in the therapy room. And they will help you to protect the time in your week that is all about you. To remind you that, even when therapy is over, it is not only okay but

necessary to take time to work on yourself, to take care of yourself, and to center yourself. Regularly. Not just when you have come to the end of your rope, but so that you don’t.

Surprising outcome: incremental changes that begin in the therapy room can compound in your outside life, leading to a richer, more joyful, more meaningful life

Taking the First Step to Finding a Therapist in Fairfax, VA

Therapy is so much more than just a place to talk about your feelings. It can be the beginning of making lasting change in your life, managing your stress in more productive ways, building confidence in yourself and your inner knowing, reducing the exhaustion and burnout that comes from putting yourself last, and building self-compassion that leads to self-love.

Seeking a therapist is not weak. It does not mean you are broken. Rather, it is a sign of strength and an investment in yourself. It is an acknowledgement that something needs to change, and that you are ready to make that happen.

If you are ready to build a better life – one that is less exhausting and more exhilarating, less about everyone else’s needs and more about your own, less about existing and more about fully living – please know that support is available. Because therapy can help you do so much more than feel better. It can help you change your life!

Dr. Rachel W. Friendly, PhD — Clinical Psychologist and Therapist in Fairfax, VA. I specialize in supporting overwhelmed, over‑functioning adult women to center their needs, reduce exhaustion, and create sustainable habits (including healthy boundary setting) through evidence‑based individual therapy. If you’re ready to prioritize yourself and explore whether therapy is the right next step, learn more about my approach or schedule a confidential consultation today.