Do I really need therapy?

Life can be hard. Stress is constant, and many of us feel ongoing pressure to perform, succeed, and “hold it all together.” Over time, that pressure can become overwhelming.

Therapy offers something different than talking with friends or family. It gives you a dedicated, unbiased space with someone who is fully on your side—someone trained to help you slow down, make sense of what you’re experiencing, and support you in finding your own answers. Rather than advice or opinions, therapy is about empowerment, clarity, and meaningful change.

You don’t need to be in crisis to benefit from therapy. Many people come simply because they want support, relief, or a deeper understanding of themselves.

If you’re curious whether therapy could help, you’re welcome to book a consultation to see if Therapy for People feels like the right place for you to begin.

How do I choose a therapist?

The helping professions can be confusing to navigate. There are psychotherapists, psychologists, counsellors, social workers, and clinical social workers. On top of that, you’ll encounter a wide range of approaches and modalities—CBT, solution-focused, trauma-informed, IFS, Gestalt, AIT, DBT—and it can quickly start to feel overwhelming.

Here’s the good news: the most important factor in choosing a therapist isn’t the modality—it’s the relationship.

You’ll be talking about meaningful, sometimes vulnerable parts of your life and working with complex emotions. It’s essential to choose someone who feels trustworthy, grounded, and easy to talk to. Decades of research consistently show that the strongest predictor of positive change in therapy is the quality of the therapeutic relationship—the sense of safety, connection, and attunement between you and your therapist.

So give yourself permission to explore. Book consultations, ask questions, and notice how you feel in the interaction. Trust your instincts. Feeling understood and supported matters far more than finding the “perfect” approach.

What kind of commitment do I need to make?

Healing in therapy takes time. You are learning new ways of thinking, feeling, and responding—often at both a cognitive and nervous-system level. It took years of experience to get you to where you are now, so meaningful change deserves patience and care.

A helpful place to begin is committing to approximately 10 sessions. This allows enough time to build momentum, establish trust, and start experiencing real shifts.

At Therapy for People, we typically recommend weekly sessions for the first four weeks. This consistency helps you settle into the process, avoids the sense of “starting over” each session, and supports the development of a strong therapeutic relationship—which is the foundation of effective therapy.

Some people come to therapy for focused, short-term support, while others with more complex histories or deeper challenges may benefit from longer-term work, sometimes a year or more. Ultimately, the length of therapy is always your choice. You are free to attend for as long—or as briefly—as feels right for you.

Therapy is a collaborative process guided by your goals, pace, and capacity.

What kind of therapy do you offer?

At Therapy for People, we practice a few different modalities to support you in growing, healing, and developing. Our primary modality is called Advanced Integrative Therapy (AIT), and is an Energy Psychology that supports the gentle and effective removal of trauma symptoms and effects. We use the word ‘trauma’ quite liberally here. We believe most of us have experienced some level of trauma in our lives. And so we also see that many of the presenting issues that bring people to therapy, such as depression, anxiety, relationship breakdowns, addictions, and other challenges, all have roots in early trauma.

We also practice Transactional Analysis (TA), a cognitive model that helps people make sense of themselves and their world. For those of you who have heard of Internal Family Systems (IFS), TA is actually the ‘parent’ of that model. In TA, we conceptualize that we all have three Ego States – Parent, Adult and Child. Each Ego State contains ‘content’ from our past and our present experiences, and each Ego State impacts our current experience. For example, when we are internally criticizing ourselves, we would name that our Critical Parent Ego State – and work with that part of us to soften and shift into a more supportive component.

Finally, we are now offering Family Constellations at Therapy for People. Family Constellations is a method developed by Bert Hellinger in Germany. He saw that many challenges that people face in their current lives are actually a result of being ‘entangled’ with past family members. You can learn more about Family Constellations by reading this blog post.