Some Things to Know Before Starting Therapy
Essential insights about what to expect when starting therapy in Ireland, from understanding the therapeutic process to building a successful relationship with your therapist.
Taking the Brave First Step Toward Therapy in Ireland
Deciding to start therapy represents one of the most courageous acts of self-care you can undertake. Yet despite increased awareness and reduced stigma around mental health in Ireland, many people approach their first therapy experience with a mixture of hope, anxiety, and uncertainty. According to the Health Service Executive (HSE), approximately one in four Irish adults will experience mental health difficulties in their lifetime, yet many delay seeking support due to misconceptions about what therapy involves or fears about the process itself.
Understanding what to expect before you begin can transform that anxiety into confidence and help you enter therapy with realistic expectations that set the stage for meaningful progress. Whether you're considering therapy for anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, or simply a desire for personal growth, knowing the realities of the therapeutic process empowers you to make informed decisions and engage more effectively from your very first session.
As psychologist Irvin Yalom wisely observed: "The therapeutic relationship is the vessel that contains and holds the work of therapy." Before you can build that vessel, however, you need to understand what therapy truly is—and perhaps more importantly, what it isn't.
You're Not Broken: Reframing What Therapy Means
One of the most persistent and damaging misconceptions about therapy is that seeking professional support means something is fundamentally wrong with you. This belief, still prevalent in Ireland despite growing mental health awareness, prevents countless people from accessing help that could genuinely transform their lives.
Therapy is not about fixing broken people because people are not machines that break down and need repair. You are a complex human being navigating an equally complex world, shaped by your biology, experiences, relationships, culture, and circumstances. Sometimes these factors create patterns of thinking, feeling, or behaving that cause distress or interfere with the life you want to live. Therapy provides a structured, supportive space to understand these patterns and develop more helpful alternatives.
Research from the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP) demonstrates that people who seek therapy represent the full spectrum of human experience. Some come during acute crisis—bereavement, relationship breakdown, or traumatic events. Others seek support for longer-standing challenges like anxiety, depression, or low self-esteem. Many begin therapy not because something is dramatically wrong, but because they want to grow, understand themselves better, or prevent small difficulties from becoming larger problems.
The decision to attend therapy actually indicates strength and self-awareness, not weakness or failure. It takes considerable courage to acknowledge that you're struggling, to admit you could benefit from support, and to take active steps toward change. According to Mental Health Ireland, people who proactively seek therapy often experience better outcomes than those who wait until crisis forces intervention, precisely because they're approaching the process from a place of agency rather than desperation.
Therapy is fundamentally about growth and understanding, not judgment or diagnosis. While therapists may use diagnostic frameworks to guide treatment planning—particularly when coordinating with GPs or accessing services through the HSE—the therapeutic relationship itself centers on understanding your unique experience, validating your feelings, and collaboratively exploring paths toward the life you want to live.
In Ireland, where cultural messages about "keeping yourself to yourself" or "not wanting to burden anyone" still influence many people's relationship with help-seeking, reframing therapy as a proactive wellness practice rather than a last resort for "broken" people represents an essential shift. Just as you might work with a personal trainer to improve physical fitness or a financial advisor to strengthen economic wellbeing, working with a therapist develops psychological fitness and emotional wellbeing.
Therapists Don't Give Advice: Understanding the Therapeutic Approach
If you're expecting therapy to involve sitting passively while an expert tells you how to solve your problems, you'll be surprised—and perhaps initially frustrated—by what actually happens. Many people enter their first session hoping for clear answers and step-by-step solutions, only to find that their therapist asks far more questions than they answer.
This isn't because therapists are withholding help or being deliberately unhelpful. Rather, it reflects a fundamental understanding of how meaningful change occurs. Lasting transformation comes from developing your own insights and discovering your own solutions, not from following someone else's instructions. When therapists provide advice, they risk several problems: the advice may not fit your unique circumstances, you may feel patronized or judged, and most critically, you don't develop the skills to navigate future challenges independently.
Instead of giving advice, therapists guide you through a process of self-discovery and skill development. Through careful questioning, reflection, and exploration, therapists help you understand yourself more deeply—your patterns of thinking and feeling, your relationship dynamics, your strengths and resources, your values and goals. This understanding becomes the foundation for change that feels authentic and sustainable rather than imposed from outside.
Different therapeutic approaches utilize various techniques, but research from the American Psychological Association (APA) consistently shows that the specific approach matters less than the quality of the therapeutic relationship and your active engagement in the process. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is widely available through HSE psychology services and private practice in Ireland, helps you identify and challenge unhelpful thought patterns. Psychodynamic therapy explores how past experiences shape present difficulties. Person-centered therapy emphasizes unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding. Mindfulness-based approaches teach skills for managing difficult emotions and staying present.
What unites these diverse approaches is that therapists act as guides and collaborators, not authorities dispensing wisdom. Your therapist brings professional knowledge, clinical experience, and expertise in facilitating change. You bring expert knowledge of your own life, experiences, values, and goals. The most effective therapy happens when these two forms of expertise work together in genuine partnership.
This collaborative approach requires patience. In a culture of instant gratification where we're accustomed to googling answers or receiving quick solutions, the exploratory nature of therapy can feel frustratingly slow. Understanding that this process is actually the point—that the meandering exploration is where the real work happens—helps you engage more productively from the start.
Therapy Is a Two-Way Street: Your Active Participation Matters
Perhaps the most crucial thing to understand before starting therapy is that you are not a passive recipient of treatment. Unlike many medical interventions where the professional does something to you while you remain relatively inactive, therapy requires your genuine, ongoing participation to work.
Research from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) demonstrates that client engagement is one of the strongest predictors of therapeutic success. This means showing up consistently, participating honestly during sessions, reflecting on insights between appointments, completing any homework or exercises your therapist suggests, and actively implementing new perspectives or behaviors in your daily life.
Building trust within the therapy space represents the foundation of productive therapeutic work. This trust doesn't emerge automatically simply because you've hired a professional therapist. It develops gradually through repeated experiences of being heard without judgment, having your feelings validated, receiving empathy during difficult moments, and discovering that vulnerability doesn't lead to criticism or rejection.
For many Irish clients, particularly those raised with cultural messages about emotional restraint or not burdening others, learning to trust a therapist enough to be genuinely vulnerable requires conscious effort. You might notice yourself minimizing difficulties, presenting a "fine" facade even when you're struggling, or deflecting when conversations approach painful topics. These protective patterns are understandable—they've probably served important functions in your life—but they limit what therapy can accomplish.
Effective therapy involves gradually learning that the therapeutic relationship is different from other relationships in your life. Your therapist maintains professional boundaries, certainly, but within those boundaries offers a unique form of unconditional acceptance. They won't reject you for your "negative" feelings, won't judge you for your struggles, and won't withdraw when things get difficult. Experiencing this consistent acceptance creates what attachment researchers call a "secure base" from which you can explore painful or challenging aspects of your experience.
Active participation also means communicating openly about the therapy itself—not just your life outside therapy, but your experience of the therapeutic process. If something your therapist said bothered you, if you feel misunderstood, if you're confused about where therapy is heading, or if you're feeling stuck, bringing these concerns into the session provides rich material for exploration and strengthens the therapeutic alliance.
According to the IACP, therapists recognize that discussing the therapy relationship itself—what researchers call "rupture and repair"—actually deepens trust and improves outcomes. When you risk expressing dissatisfaction or confusion and your therapist responds with openness and curiosity rather than defensiveness, it reinforces that this relationship can tolerate authenticity.
The Challenges and Rewards: Therapy Is Hard Work
The popular image of therapy—lying on a couch chatting about your week while someone occasionally says "and how does that make you feel?"—bears little resemblance to reality. Real therapy involves genuine emotional work that can be exhausting, frustrating, and uncomfortable. Understanding this beforehand helps you approach challenges as part of the process rather than signs that something is wrong.
Therapy is emotionally demanding precisely because it asks you to examine aspects of yourself and your life that you may have been avoiding, to feel emotions you've been suppressing, and to acknowledge truths you'd rather deny. Whether you're processing traumatic experiences, confronting unhelpful patterns that feel comfortable even though they cause problems, or exploring aspects of yourself that carry shame, this work requires courage and persistence.
The difficulty of therapy is actually inseparable from its effectiveness. As psychotherapist and author Lori Gottlieb notes: "We can't have change without loss." Even positive changes involve losing familiar patterns, identities, or relationships. Letting go of the anxiety that's been your constant companion, the anger that's protected you from vulnerability, or the people-pleasing that's earned approval but exhausted you—all involve genuine grief for what you're releasing, even as you move toward something healthier.
Yet despite—or perhaps because of—these challenges, therapy can be incredibly rewarding. The experience of being truly seen and accepted, of developing insight into patterns that have confused you for years, of discovering inner resources you didn't know you possessed, and of gradually building the life you want rather than the one that happened to you creates profound meaning and satisfaction.
Research published by Mental Health Ireland demonstrates that therapy produces not just symptom reduction but significant improvements in overall wellbeing, relationship quality, work performance, and life satisfaction. Clients frequently report that therapy provided them with tools and perspectives they continue using long after formal treatment ends, creating lasting benefits that extend far beyond the immediate presenting problem.
Many Irish clients express surprise at how valuable they find the simple experience of dedicated, uninterrupted attention. In our busy, distracted world where genuine listening is rare, having fifty minutes of someone's complete focus on understanding your experience feels almost countercultural. As one client described it: "It's the only time each week where I'm not performing, not managing anyone else's feelings, not trying to be anything other than exactly where I am."
The confidentiality of the therapeutic relationship also creates unique possibilities. Unlike talking with friends or family—where considerations of their reactions, your reputation, or shared relationships may limit what you feel comfortable sharing—therapy offers a space to explore anything without these constraints. This freedom to be completely honest, to voice the thoughts you judge most harshly, to acknowledge feelings you'd rather not have, creates opportunities for understanding and integration impossible in other contexts.
Expect to Feel Exhausted: The Aftermath of Emotional Work
One aspect of therapy that consistently surprises new clients is the profound exhaustion that can follow sessions, particularly in the early stages or when working through especially difficult material. Understanding this phenomenon helps you plan appropriately and normalize an experience that might otherwise feel concerning.
Therapy is mentally and emotionally tiring for several interconnected reasons. The level of concentration required to stay present with difficult emotions, the energy needed to maintain openness and vulnerability, the cognitive work of examining patterns and making connections, and the nervous system activation that accompanies discussing traumatic or anxiety-provoking material all contribute to post-session fatigue.
According to research from the World Health Organization, emotional processing requires significant neurological resources. When you cry during a session, confront difficult truths, or experience strong emotions you've been suppressing, your brain and body are doing genuine work that consumes energy much like physical exercise does. The exhaustion you feel afterwards isn't weakness—it's evidence of engagement.
For clients accessing online therapy in Ireland through platforms like Feel Better Therapy, this exhaustion can create unique challenges. When your session ends, you're immediately back in your home environment without the transition time that travel to and from a therapist's office would provide. You might need to quickly shift into other roles—parent, partner, employee—without adequate time to recover and reintegrate.
Planning self-care after sessions becomes essential, particularly early in your therapy journey. This might mean scheduling sessions when you don't have immediate demands afterwards, building in thirty minutes to decompress, having gentle activities planned like walking, journaling, or simply resting, or communicating with household members about needing quiet time post-session.
Some clients find physical self-care particularly helpful—having a warm shower, making a comforting cup of tea, doing gentle stretching, or cuddling with pets. Others prefer solitary activities that provide space for continued reflection without social demands. There's no single right way to care for yourself after therapy; the key is recognizing that this care is necessary and planning for it.
As therapy progresses and you develop greater emotional regulation skills, the intensity of post-session exhaustion typically diminishes. You become more practiced at tolerating difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed, better at managing the pace of emotional work, and more skilled at self-soothing when activated. Early exhaustion doesn't mean you're doing therapy wrong—it means you're doing the genuine emotional work that creates change.
Feeling Stuck Is Normal: Progress Isn't Linear
Many people enter therapy expecting steady, consistent progress—feeling a bit better each week until eventually they're "fixed" and therapy concludes. When they instead experience periods where nothing seems to change, or when they feel they're moving backwards, they worry that therapy isn't working or that they're failing at recovery.
Progress in therapy rarely follows a linear trajectory. Research consistently demonstrates that psychological healing follows a pattern more like two steps forward, one step back, with plateaus, sudden breakthroughs, temporary regressions, and periods where nothing perceptible seems to happen but important internal work is occurring.
These plateaus and stuck periods serve important functions. Sometimes you've made rapid initial progress and need time to consolidate gains before moving deeper. Other times, you're unconsciously approaching material too painful or threatening to face yet, and the stuck feeling reflects psychological resistance protecting you from overwhelming activation. Still other times, the patterns you're working to change are deeply ingrained and genuinely resistant to modification, requiring patient, repeated work before shifting.
According to the IACP, feeling stuck in therapy provides valuable information rather than evidence of failure. When you notice this experience, discussing it explicitly with your therapist often proves more productive than silently enduring it. Together, you can explore what might be happening: Are you avoiding certain topics? Has something in the therapeutic relationship created disconnection? Do you need a different approach or pace? Has progress actually occurred in ways you haven't recognized?
Sometimes what feels like being stuck is actually integration—your psyche processing and incorporating insights in the background without conscious awareness. Much like how strength develops during rest days between workouts rather than during the exercise itself, psychological growth often happens between therapeutic breakthroughs rather than during them.
Understanding that therapy involves natural rhythms of progress and consolidation helps you maintain patience and trust in the process. Setting realistic expectations about timeframes also helps. While some improvements emerge quickly—many clients report feeling hopeful or less alone after just a few sessions—addressing deeper patterns, healing significant trauma, or making fundamental personality changes typically requires months or even years of consistent work.
The HSE's mental health services and private practitioners throughout Ireland generally recommend assessing progress over months rather than weeks, looking for overall trends rather than day-to-day variations. If you've been engaged in therapy for several months without any perceptible change, that warrants conversation with your therapist about adjusting the approach, but week-to-week fluctuations are completely normal.
Unexpected Territory: When Therapy Goes Where You Didn't Plan
Most people begin therapy with specific concerns in mind—managing anxiety, improving a relationship, processing grief, or developing better stress management skills. While therapy certainly addresses these presenting issues, the process frequently uncovers connections, patterns, or topics that you didn't anticipate exploring.
Unanticipated topics arise because human psychology is interconnected in ways we don't consciously recognize. The anxiety you came to address may trace back to childhood experiences of unpredictability. The relationship difficulties you wanted to resolve may reflect deeper self-esteem issues or attachment patterns formed decades ago. The work stress you sought help managing may connect to perfectionism rooted in early experiences of conditional love.
This expansion beyond initial concerns isn't your therapist taking you off track or unnecessarily complicating things. Rather, it reflects the reality that symptoms rarely exist in isolation. Effective therapy addresses root causes rather than just surface manifestations, and those roots often extend into unexpected territory.
For many Irish clients, this means confronting cultural patterns or family dynamics that influenced their development in ways they hadn't fully recognized. Research from Mental Health Ireland highlights how Irish cultural factors—including historical trauma, religious influences, attitudes toward emotional expression, and changing social dynamics—shape mental health in ways that become clearer through therapeutic exploration.
Learning to experience feelings without judgment represents one of therapy's most transformative yet challenging aspects. Many clients enter therapy hoping to feel better by feeling less—less anxiety, less sadness, less anger. While reduced emotional distress is certainly a valid goal, therapy often involves first learning to feel more fully and accept emotions without judging them as good or bad, right or wrong.
This approach, supported by extensive research from the APA, recognizes that attempts to suppress or avoid difficult emotions typically intensify them over time and create additional problems. Learning to notice, name, and tolerate uncomfortable feelings without being controlled by them or immediately acting to eliminate them builds genuine emotional resilience.
For clients unaccustomed to experiencing emotions openly—whether due to cultural conditioning, family patterns, or personal coping strategies—this aspect of therapy can feel counterintuitive or uncomfortable. Trusting that your therapist knows where they're guiding you, even when the immediate experience feels harder rather than easier, requires patience and faith in the process.
Setting Clear Goals: Creating Your Therapeutic Roadmap
While therapy involves exploration and discovery that can lead to unexpected territory, having clear goals provides essential direction and allows you to measure progress meaningfully. Establishing therapy goals collaboratively with your therapist typically occurs during initial sessions and evolves as therapy progresses.
Effective therapy goals balance specificity with flexibility. Rather than vague aims like "feel better" or "be happier," useful goals might include reducing panic attacks to once monthly or less, improving communication with your partner by using specific skills, developing three healthy coping strategies for work stress, or processing grief to the point where you can remember your loved one without overwhelming pain.
The NICE guidelines recommend SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound—adapted to the reality that psychological change doesn't always follow predictable timelines. Your therapist can help you formulate goals that provide direction without creating unrealistic pressure or disappointment when progress doesn't match arbitrary schedules.
Regularly assessing your progress ensures therapy remains focused and effective. Many therapists build periodic reviews into treatment—perhaps every six to eight weeks—to explicitly discuss what's helping, what isn't, whether goals need adjustment, and whether the therapeutic approach requires modification. These conversations prevent therapy from continuing indefinitely without clear purpose while allowing natural evolution as deeper issues emerge or initial concerns resolve.
Progress assessment looks different for different concerns. Some improvements lend themselves to concrete measurement: tracking anxiety symptoms, monitoring mood patterns, counting panic attacks, or rating relationship satisfaction on scales. Other changes manifest more subtly: noticing you handled a difficult situation differently, recognizing a pattern before automatically acting on it, or feeling more capacity to tolerate discomfort.
Recognizing therapy as ongoing self-exploration rather than a one-time fix helps maintain realistic expectations. Even after primary symptoms improve and initial goals are met, many people find value in continued therapeutic work for personal growth, maintaining progress, or addressing new challenges as they arise. There's no single "correct" relationship with therapy—some people engage intensively for a defined period, others maintain monthly sessions indefinitely, and still others return periodically throughout life as needs emerge.
Choosing the Right Therapeutic Support in Ireland
Understanding what to expect from therapy helps you make informed decisions about the support you seek. In Ireland, you have several options for accessing therapeutic services, each with different considerations.
The HSE provides psychological services through Primary Care Psychology and other programs, offering free or low-cost access to qualified professionals. However, waiting lists can be lengthy in many areas, and the number of sessions may be limited. These services work best for time-limited, focused interventions or when cost is the primary barrier to accessing care.
Private therapy offers more immediate access, greater choice of therapists and approaches, and typically more flexibility in session frequency and duration. Most private therapists in Ireland charge between €60-90 per individual session, with some offering reduced rates for students or those experiencing financial difficulty. Many health insurance policies provide partial coverage for counseling and psychotherapy when provided by accredited professionals.
Online therapy platforms like Feel Better Therapy combine the benefits of private therapy with additional convenience and accessibility. Online therapy eliminates travel time and expenses, provides access to therapists regardless of your location in Ireland—particularly valuable for those in rural areas—offers more flexible scheduling including evening and weekend appointments, and creates a comfortable environment for those who find face-to-face sessions intimidating.
Feel Better Therapy connects you with certified Irish therapists who are fully accredited members of professional bodies including the IACP, IAHIP, ICP, and PSI. The platform uses a detailed matching process to connect you with a therapist suited to your specific needs, preferences, and goals, ensuring you work with someone who understands your unique circumstances and can provide appropriate support.
Research consistently demonstrates that online therapy is as effective as in-person treatment for most mental health concerns, including anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship issues. The convenience and reduced barriers often lead to more consistent attendance, which itself predicts better outcomes.
When choosing any therapeutic support, prioritize finding a qualified professional with whom you feel comfortable. Trust your intuition during initial consultations—the therapeutic relationship matters more than credentials alone. If something feels off or you don't connect with your first therapist, seeking a different professional is entirely appropriate and encouraged.
Moving Forward with Confidence and Hope
Starting therapy represents a powerful commitment to your own wellbeing. By understanding what to expect—that therapy involves collaborative exploration rather than passive fix-it solutions, that progress isn't linear, that the work can be challenging yet rewarding, and that building trust takes time—you position yourself for success from your very first session.
Remember that seeking support isn't an admission of weakness or brokenness. It's an investment in understanding yourself more deeply, developing more effective ways of navigating life's challenges, and moving toward the person you want to become. Every person who has ever benefited from therapy began exactly where you are now—with that first courageous decision to reach out for support.
The journey of therapy unfolds differently for everyone. Your experience will be uniquely yours, shaped by your particular circumstances, goals, challenges, and strengths. What remains constant across all successful therapy is genuine engagement, honest communication, patience with the process, and trust that meaningful change is possible.
Whether you're addressing specific mental health concerns, working through relationship difficulties, processing past trauma, or simply seeking personal growth and self-understanding, quality therapy provides structured support for that journey. With online platforms like Feel Better Therapy, accessing certified Irish therapists who understand your cultural context and can provide evidence-based treatment has never been more convenient or accessible.
Your mental health deserves the same care and attention you'd give physical health concerns. Taking that first step toward therapy—researching options, reaching out for information, scheduling an initial consultation—demonstrates self-awareness and self-compassion that will serve you well not just in therapy, but in every aspect of your life.
The path toward feeling better begins with a single decision: choosing to invest in yourself and your wellbeing. Everything else unfolds from there.