Sorry for crying.
You probably think I’m crazy.
Sorry if I’m rambling.
You probably don’t see this a lot.
Am I talking too much?
I shouldn’t be so upset.
Does this make sense?
I should be over this already.
I don’t know why this bothers me so much.
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to do this.
As a therapist, I hear versions of these statements all the time. They come from people who are worried they’re crying too much, talking too much, feeling too much, or somehow doing therapy incorrectly.
And I get it. Therapy is a strange experience. You sit down with another person and are invited to talk about things you may rarely say out loud. You might be discussing something painful, embarrassing, confusing, or deeply personal. You may not know where the conversation is going, what you’re supposed to say next, or even exactly how you feel about the thing you’re talking about.
There can be a surprising amount of pressure to somehow be good at therapy.
But you don’t have to be.
There Is No Right Way to Show Up
People come into therapy with all kinds of ideas about what they’re supposed to do once they get there. They think they should have something prepared to talk about. They should be able to explain their feelings clearly. They should know what they want to work on. They should be making progress. And ideally, apparently, they should do all of this without crying too much or taking too long to get to the point.
None of that is required.
You’re welcome to cry in therapy. You’re also welcome not to cry. You can talk for most of the session or struggle to find the words. You can arrive knowing exactly what you want to discuss and then completely change direction ten minutes later. You can say something that makes perfect sense in your head and then realize you have no idea how to explain it.
You can also not know.
Not knowing is a very normal part of therapy. I don’t know why this bothers me so much isn’t a failure to understand yourself. It’s often the beginning of figuring something out.
The therapy room is one of the few places where you don’t have to have the polished version of the story ready before you tell it.
Your Feelings Don’t Need to Be Justified
Another thing I hear frequently is some variation of I shouldn’t feel this way.
People are incredibly good at building cases against their own emotions. The breakup happened months ago. The job situation isn’t objectively that terrible. Someone else has been through something worse. They know intellectually that everything will probably be fine.
And yet, they’re still upset.
Emotions don’t always respond to the arguments we make against them. You can know that something “shouldn’t” bother you and still be bothered by it. You can understand something rationally and still have a completely different emotional reaction.
Therapy gives us an opportunity to get curious about that gap instead of immediately trying to eliminate it.
Rather than Why am I still upset about this? I should be over it, we can ask: Why might this still be affecting me? What does this bring up for me? What is happening here that I haven’t fully understood yet?
That shift from judgment to curiosity can create room for something different to happen.
You’re Allowed to Just Be
Of course, therapy can involve learning skills, challenging patterns, changing behaviours, and doing difficult work. I believe deeply in all of those things.
But before any of that can happen, there needs to be room to simply show up as you are.
You don’t need to manage your therapist’s impression of you. You don’t need to make your story interesting or coherent. You don’t need to apologize for having an emotional reaction in a room specifically designed to make space for emotional reactions.
You’re welcome to cry, to not cry, to talk, to not talk, to feel, to share, to not know what to share, and sometimes to simply sit there and figure out what’s going on.
There’s no prize for being the easiest therapy client. There’s no perfect way to use the hour.
You’re allowed to just be there.
It’s okay.
