The psyche changes only at the pace a person can withstand. And this is not a technical limitation - it is a structural one. You can fight against it. Be angry at it. But it is there.
You cannot book more sessions and get the result faster. You cannot «want it badly enough» and quickly process a crisis. You cannot «understand» and immediately change your life. Because between awareness and a change in behavior lies time. And it is the time of life, not the time of a session.
Psychotherapy does not happen in the session. It happens somewhere in between - in moments and fragments. The session is a meeting, a focus, a conversation, sometimes an insight.
Change is what happens afterwards: digesting, resisting, rolling back, small trials in reality, the assembly of a new identity. And this cannot be compressed.
Because the psyche protects itself from overload: give it too much, and the person doesn’t integrate - they split off. Because feelings have their own pace. Grief, shame, loss do not accelerate without distortion. You can «speed up» - into mania, into devaluation, into avoidance. But then it is not about change, it is about bypassing. I have seen it more than once.
And at some point an unpleasant place appears. The client is in pain and badly wants it to go faster. And the therapist also wants to help faster. But there is a limit.
In this place the therapist meets powerlessness. Not because he is bad. But because he works with a living psyche, not a mechanism. It hits both the client and the therapist. But it also - helps to grow up.
Strange, isn’t it - to know that the therapist is not omnipotent either. Just a living person next to you.
Change requires not more effort, but more time - the time a person is able to withstand.
If you are now at a point where you want it faster and it isn’t working - that is normal. And you don’t have to walk it alone.
I have openings for individual therapy: @vkarasaev