7 Things I Didn't Tell You as a Therapist: Secrets Not Written in the Psychology Books

1. 'Venting' Your Anger Only Makes You Angrier

'Shout, throw things, punch that pillow, you'll feel better.' You have probably heard this advice thousands of times; some older forms of therapy still defend the method. The reality is very different. Brad Bushman's classic 2002 study (and the dozens of studies that followed) showed that physically 'venting' your anger makes you angrier. Punching, shouting, hitting a pillow: these do not extinguish anger, they feed it, because the brain learns 'so I am someone who does this when I get angry.' Over time your anger is triggered more easily and becomes more intense.

What actually helps? A cooling-off period, changing location, deep breathing (banal, but it works), and most importantly, asking yourself what real emotion lies beneath the anger: is it hurt, helplessness, fear? Anger rarely comes alone; it is usually a cover for something else.

2. The Advice to 'Be Kind to Yourself' Sometimes Makes Things Worse

What happens when we give people with low self-esteem affirmations like 'look in the mirror every day and say: I am a wonderful person'? Joanne Wood's study, published in Psychological Science (2009), showed that for people who already have low self-esteem, positive self-talk makes things worse. Why? Because your brain knows its own inner logic. As you say 'I am a wonderful person,' one part of you objects 'no you're not,' and this conflict erodes self-esteem even further.

What works? Not grand, but realistic sentences. Instead of 'I am a wonderful person': 'I make mistakes sometimes, but I am trying to learn.' The brain does not object to this sentence, because it is honest. When we say 'be gentle with yourself' in therapy, this is exactly what we mean: not telling lies, but honest compassion.

3. Feeling Unhappy More Often Is Actually Normal (And Good News)

Nearly all of my clients ask the same thing: 'Are other people like this too? Or is something wrong with me?' Here is a truth you are never told: the natural tendency of the human brain is not happiness, but survival. Evolutionarily, our brain is programmed to look for problems; it looks for threat, looks for what is missing, sees the bad first. This is called negativity bias (Baumeister et al., 2001, 'Bad is Stronger Than Good', Review of General Psychology). That is why those endlessly happy-looking people on social media are a performance; no one is that happy, nor can they be.

Real psychological health is not 'always feeling good,' but being able to let emotions come and go: living through sadness and letting it pass, feeling anger and responding in a balanced way, noticing moments of happiness but not becoming dependent on them. If you feel 'I must be constantly happy' and get angry at yourself when you fail, you are chasing the wrong goal; one of the first things we do in therapy is change that goal.

4. Therapists Are Not 'Objective', and Cannot Be

The truth is: every therapist enters the room with their own life experiences, values, biases and traumas. We are not a completely 'blank screen,' nor can we be. What matters is noticing this and managing it transparently; a good therapist knows themselves, knows their own blind spots, and monitors the feelings the client stirs up in them (we call this 'countertransference').

Why am I telling you this? Because when your therapist does not 'fit' you, it is not a deficiency but a matter of match between two people; one therapist not working does not mean another won't either; you have the right to 'change' your therapist, and that is not a failure. What I have seen over 18 years: the fit between client and therapist (called the 'therapeutic alliance' in the clinical literature) is the strongest predictor of the therapy outcome, a factor even more powerful than which school the therapy belongs to or how experienced the therapist is (Wampold, 2015, World Psychiatry). So if you do not feel comfortable with your therapist, that is worth saying out loud.

5. Recounting Your Traumas in Detail Does Not Heal (Sometimes It Harms)

Some approaches, especially from the 1990s, said: 'you must vent your trauma, you must tell every detail, otherwise it builds up inside you.' Current research shows the opposite. In particular, 'critical incident stress debriefing'-type interventions carried out right after the trauma were found to actually increase PTSD (Rose et al., 2002, Cochrane Review). Telling your trauma story over and over, with emotional intensity, takes your brain back to that moment each time; with every retelling the connection strengthens and the wound deepens.

Modern trauma therapy works differently. Approaches like EMDR, somatic experiencing and prolonged exposure do not 'discharge' the trauma; rather they reprocess it at a safe distance. First we stabilize your nervous system, then we approach step by step, in small pieces, at a safe pace. If a therapist tells you 'you'll recount your whole trauma in one session,' or insists 'give me details, give me details,' be careful: this is not good therapy.

6. 'Changing' Your Thoughts Works Far More Narrowly Than You Were Taught

You may have heard it: 'replace your negative thoughts with positive thoughts,' the classic cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approach. Does it work? Yes, up to a point. But over the last 15 years the so-called 'third wave' approaches (ACT, mindfulness-based therapies, DBT) arrived and said something different: don't fight with your thoughts, change your relationship with them.

The Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) developed by Hayes et al. (2006) showed that instead of trying to replace the thought 'I am worthless' with 'I am worthy,' recognising that thought as merely a thought is a more powerful strategy. When 'I am worthless' arrives, don't fight it with 'no I'm not!'; say 'aha, my brain produced this thought again,' be an observer, not a debater. Because every thought you fight grows stronger; what you ignore does not fade; but the thoughts you notice and let pass without judgement lose their power.

7. The Lie 'Time Heals Everything' Is the Most Dangerous Advice

Our elders loved to say it, perhaps they were right in their time, but today we know that time does not resolve unprocessed emotions: it hides them, postpones them, perhaps shrinks them, but does not resolve them. For years I have worked with people who convinced themselves for years that 'I'm over this now': a divorce 15 years ago, the loss of a father 20 years back, a childhood memory, never spoken about, never processed. But the symptoms come: sleep is disturbed, relationships become strained, anxiety has risen, unexplained depressive episodes have begun.

The brain does not forget everything; what it cannot resolve, it stores in the body. The title of Bessel van der Kolk's famous book is no accident: The Body Keeps the Score. If something you experienced years ago still affects you, seeking professional help instead of saying 'let time resolve it' is not a sign of weakness, but of intelligence.

Final Word

I want you to know that therapy is not a 'healing magic spell,' but at the same time a far more effective, scientific and powerful tool than most people think. In our culture, going to a therapist is still perceived as somewhat of a 'weakness'; especially in the Turkish community, statements like 'we solve it within the family,' 'pull yourself together,' 'be strong' are very dominant. And if, moreover, you live as a Turk in Europe and feel caught between two cultures, your burden is many times heavier.

Therapy is not for the weak, but for those with the courage to understand themselves. And one more thing: working with a therapist with whom you can speak Turkish and who understands your own culture is something different. The sentences you form in a second language cannot carry the emotional weight of that first word. In your mother tongue you can cry, in your mother tongue you can laugh, in your mother tongue you can be yourself.

Sources: Bushman (2002) Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28(6); Wood, Perunovic & Lee (2009) Psychological Science 20(7); Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer & Vohs (2001) Review of General Psychology 5(4); Wampold (2015) World Psychiatry 14(3); Rose, Bisson, Churchill & Wessely (2002) Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews; Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda & Lillis (2006) Behaviour Research and Therapy 44(1); van der Kolk (2014) The Body Keeps the Score. This article is for information purposes and does not replace an individual clinical assessment.