The Benefits & Limitations of Talk Therapy and How Astrology & Somatic Work Can Fill in the Gaps
As someone with a background in Counseling Psychology and as a licensed professional counselor, I’ve witnessed (and personally experienced) both the benefits and limitations of talk therapy. And I want to be clear that I wouldn’t have trained and become a therapist myself if I didn’t believe in what it provides, and those dealing with significant mental health concerns should absolutely seek therapy. Traditional psychotherapy can provide us with essential tools and a solid foundation when we’re trying to find stability. This blog post is not to negate any of that, and is not medical advice, but rather outlines the ways that therapy can end up feeling restrictive or incomplete in the healing process over time.
I’m speaking to the people that are functioning day-to-day just fine, but don’t necessarily feel fulfilled. They have a solid understanding of their patterns (thanks to therapy), but they still can’t seem to make real, lasting changes in their lives. At this point in their journey, they’re not looking to simply maintain and get through; they’re looking to thrive.
This is the type of transformation I offer to women through my coaching container, which combines certain elements of therapy with Astrology & Somatic work. To detail how this combination works, I’ll share some of the things I think therapy does very well, and some of the main limitations (and how Astrology & Somatics fill in the missing pieces). This is not an exhaustive list, just some of the main themes I’ve noticed in doing therapy for 9 years, and in doing my own self-development work.
First: some things talk therapy is helpful for:
We all need a witness to our lives. Someone that we can share our stories and lived experiences with. It can be extremely cathartic to finally not hold that all in, and to know we’re not alone with these experiences.
It’s especially helpful when we’re sharing with someone that’s emotionally attuned to us (as therapists are trained to be). As a species, we are wired for connection. This is one way which we derive safety, and often times we don’t get that in childhood and might not have experienced a safe, healthy relationship otherwise. Therapy can provide a different experience for us to heal some of these attachment struggles, and help us to choose differently going forward.
Psychology also provides a very sound framework for us to be able to put words to our experiences. Sometimes a diagnosis can be incredibly validating. This can also help to normalize what we’re going through, gain insight into our patterns, and help to identify ways to remedy symptoms.
Some limitations of talk therapy alone:
We are only able to talk about what we are conscious of. How we present what the core issue is still through our lens, and that’s all that can be worked on initially. Insight can take time to gain, and we might not always be relaying all of the relevant information.
There are also lots of ways our mind can play tricks on us. We all develop different defense mechanisms, ways in which we’re trying to keep ourselves safe, but end up getting in our own way. The mind is not always the most reliable historian either, as we’re prone to looping over the same things over and over again, and can really get stuck in a certain storyline, often omitting important facts and details.
Top-down approaches to healing (which is working with our cognitions first, trying to find an intellectual understanding) are often incomplete because this doesn’t always translate to the whole system. We can rationally understand something, but that doesn’t automatically change how we’re feeling or what we’re experiencing in our bodies.
The first two of these gaps can be filled in by Astrology! Astrology has truly changed my life and opened up so much for me that years of therapy couldn’t reach. And this is because we’re zooming out to consider things on a much broader scale, from a higher perspective. From this vantage point, Astrology can also provide some context for why certain issues may be happening at this moment in time, AND offer another framework of understanding that can feel more empowering than psychological diagnoses...
Like I mentioned above, when you go into a therapy session, you can only share about the problem through your lens, at that moment in time. But when we look at your birth chart, we zoom out to view things on a soul level. Sometimes I think of traditional therapy as really being in the weeds or down in the field, while astrology is up in the trees, seeing it all from above. When I look at a natal chart, I’m able to validate your struggles and concerns, name your soul’s lessons, core wounds, expected challenges, and areas for growth. But I’m also able to see what you need on an incredibly nuanced level. I can see what relationships are likely to work for you, what you need to feel emotionally safe and recharged, what you crave in career and work, the ways you communicate and take in information, etc. So I’m able to provide the validation that therapy offers, but on an even deeper level, mirroring back pieces of yourself that you might not have thought of in a certain way/wouldn’t have thought to share as being relevant on your own. In this sense, Astrology opens up our frame of reference, widening what we’re conscious of, both increasing self-awareness and providing a roadmap forward.
Additionally, when we add astrological transits into the conversation, taking into account where the planets are right now and what’s being highlighted in your life, we have context for what you’re moving through presently, making sense of things from a big picture perspective. We can glean which seasons we’re in and, therefore, can discern how to work with that energy, rather than feel like we’re forcing something. We can take this a step further by seeing which energies or actions would help to balance things out and/or get a general sense of how long the current season (or issues) might last.
Lastly, Astrology also provides a framework for understanding ourselves, but it’s an archetypal one. So rather than orienting around a diagnosis that is inherently pathologizing and can feel restrictive, Astrology is a way of understanding energy & our core essence. This shifts our focus from “What’s wrong with me?” to “How can I be more of me?” The conversation evolves into what’s in alignment with our soul (and what’s not).
The last, but certainly not least, component of my coaching container is Somatic work. If you’ve made it this far, you likely don’t need me to tell you that just knowing that something isn’t the best for you isn’t often enough to change your behavior. Having awareness of your patterns is great, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to change. This is where somatic work becomes crucial, and addresses the third & final limitation of talk therapy that I mentioned above. Because while traditional therapy is a “top-down” method for healing, somatics is a “bottom-up” approach, bringing the body into the conversation. This is a game changer because finally we’re working with the entire system. As the saying goes “our issues live in our tissues,” so of course when we’re trying to actually change something, we need to go to the root. And the body is where all of our emotional experiences live. The body is an incredible source of intuitive wisdom that is naturally oriented toward healing; it just needs the right conditions.
Somatic work helps us to reconnect with this intuitive source of wisdom that’s been within us all along. This is done in a gradual, digestible way, as there are often many good reasons that we’ve become disconnected from the body in the first place (that could be a whole other blog post). Through difficult personal experiences and cultural influences, we learn to disconnect or numb out our internal experience in order to survive. But if we want to come home to ourselves and live a life that feels like thriving (versus surviving), we need to come back to the body. It truly is the entry point for everything: our connection to source, how tapped into our present day experience we are, our sensuality. Reconnecting with our body helps us build capacity to truly be present for all of the moments of our lives.
My coaching container combines elements of counseling with Astrology & Somatic work, providing the conditions for true alchemy to occur. Explore my coaching offerings more here or apply today.
