When it comes to picking a therapist, make sure you find a therapist you trust. While therapeutic modalities are important and its helpful to find someone whose outlook helps you focus on integrating rather than focusing on controlling more.
Because high achievers are often good at controlling things, some modalities can lead to further disconnection from self and leave you feeling like you’re doing something wrong for having a certain thought or feeling.
Hi, I’m Holly Grupe, owner and a therapist at Balanced Growth Therapy, and here I’ll share 2 best therapies for high-achieving women.
1. Parts Work
The parts of you that have led you to feel like you’re not reaching the levels you want, the parts that feel like they’re getting in the way, those parts may actually be just the ticket to level up. These parts have developed as a way for you to protect yourself and cope with life.
For example, if you struggle with anxiety, this may be a part of you that in the past needed to be on high alert to keep you aware in unpredictable environments or relationships, which is very adaptive. But, once you are in a safer environment, this part might still be responding as if stress is still present which can become problematic in day to day life.
Think about if you had a new boss come into your work and starts making a lot of changes without even finding out how or why things operate they way they do. That would be frustrating for anyone!
Simply trying to override a part, without understanding where it came from or why it responds a certain way can be disrupting your system and lead to feeling disconnected, as well as feeling like a failure when you can’t just make it stop. Learning to understand and tend to parts is how you can integrate all parts of yourself and implement changes that support your whole system in healing.
Parts therapy is associated with several types of therapies, such as Internal Family Systems (IFS), Gestalt Therapy, Ego State Therapy and others.
2. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy:
This is a trauma focused therapy. Trauma isn’t always capital T trauma. Sometimes it might not seem like events were traumatic, but then can still get stuck inside of your memory in a maladaptive way leading to later challenges that might seem unrelated to current symptoms.
EMDR helps target these maladaptive memory networks and uses bilateral stimulation to help you integrate these stuck parts/memories. This type of therapy is less talk focused, which is great for high achievers.
While other talk therapies are more insight focused, EMDR therapy creates a unique healing setting for your brain to engage in its natural healing process similar to the processing done in REM sleep.
The types of therapies listed above are only a few types that focus on integration. Many therapists pull from multiple theories, so the most important thing is having a therapist you can trust and feel comfortable being open with.
Before picking a therapist, talk to a few and see who resonates with you. Remember you are the expert on you, a therapist can be an expert in their field but can never have the authority to know what is truly best for you.
If you found this information helpful and feel you are ready to work on your parts, or want to try EMDR to remove the mental blocks that are holding you back, click the button below to SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT and let’s get started!
