I'm not here to slam therapy. I believe it's a vital part of our personal and spiritual journey toward wholeness and lasting peace. But I do think many people are missing the mark by making it the primary focus, instead of integrating other aspects of growth.

As a transpersonal psychologist, I recommend a more integrative approach to life. The truth is, therapy can become counterproductive if it isn’t supported by other forms of growth. Too much therapy without this balance might leave you feeling like you've overdone therapy, while you still don’t feel any closer to real change. Worst case, it can actually cause more psychological harm.

WHY THERAPY IS IMPORTANT

Therapy is an essential tool for understanding ourselves more deeply. It offers a structured space to process emotions, unpack past experiences, and develop healthier patterns of thinking and relating. At its best, therapy helps us heal from wounds we may not even realise we carry — giving us the clarity and support needed to move through life with greater self-awareness, confidence, and emotional freedom.

CHALLENGES OF THERAPY

But therapy isn't a magic wand. It involves moving towards our pain. Moving towards our trauma. Unpacking it, focusing on it, and embracing it. And while it can be productive, it can also have potential side effects and consequences.

Sadly, while everyone seems to be in therapy these days, few people are actually talking about the potential adverse effects and outcomes if not approached in a balanced and mindful way.

Research shows that approximately 10% of clients get worse after beginning therapy. This is not surprising as we head into all the darkness we've been avoiding for so long. But stopping therapy at this point can lead to a negative outcome.

Nearly 60% of clients experience unpleasant memories resurfacing. And some people experience unintended consequences such as new symptoms, suicidality, and relationship and work challenges.

Rather than an improvement in mental health, people's mental health can start to deteriorate even more. There's a lot going on. And it's not just about diving into our deepest, darkest secrets and opening Pandora's box.

Not all therapists and mental health professionals are created equally, and many are not experienced or equipped enough to hold space for other people's pain and trauma. I've had clients come to me and tell me how they felt judged by other therapists.

This ineffective therapy can cause more harm and, in some cases, exacerbate any interpersonal problems. Rather than feeling better, clients are left feeling more shame, more isolation and more helplessness.

Plus, sad to say, therapy is a business, and for some therapists, that means holding on to their clients for an extended period of time even when they're not making progress. Once you start therapy, it can sometimes be difficult to end therapy, breaking the client-thereapist relationship.

SIGNS OF TOO MUCH THERAPY

If you're repeatedly discussing the same problems with your therapist, feeling stuck and not seeing any transformation, it's probably not working.

Here are 5 key details that serve as signs you might be overdoing therapy — when it shifts from helpful to potentially hindering growth:

🔶 You’re constantly analysing yourself but not actually changing.

You spend a lot of time naming patterns or talking about your issues, but you’re stuck in the same emotional loops without meaningful shifts in how you feel or live.

🔶 You rely on your therapist for decisions you used to make yourself.

Instead of building confidence and autonomy, you find yourself deferring to your therapist for validation or direction in everyday choices and decision-making.

🔶 You feel more identified with your wounds than your strengths.

Therapy has helped you understand your pain — but now you’re over-identifying with it, and struggling to see yourself as more than your trauma or dysfunction.

🔶 You keep digging for more problems that may not even be there.

Rather than feeling more whole, you feel like you're endlessly searching for the next childhood wound or hidden block — even when things in your life are actually going okay.

🔶 You’ve become emotionally exhausted from all the self-work.

The process of healing has started to feel draining or even hopeless. Instead of feeling lighter, you’re more weighed down by introspection.

THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS AND WHY THERAPY IS BAD

But that's not the whole story. Therapy is about us. It's about me. It's often framed as me, the victim. And every time we talk about me, the victim, we reinforce the idea of me, the victim.

Therapy tends to be based on a cause-and-effect model. This happened to me, the victim, so I'm like this. But this psychological model, rooted in Freudian psychology, is just one way of looking at things and framing our lives and experiences.

There are other healthier and more productive ways of looking at things (too much of a tangent here, but if you're interested, look up Adlerian psychology).

We build narratives all around this cause-and-effect framing. My [fill in the blank] did [fill in the blank] to me, and as a result, I [fill in the blank]. There's little room for growth, control or agency here. And I, the victim, becomes the pervading narrative of our life.

Me becomes me, the individual. Me, the personal self. Me, the person who's been through all this trauma. Me, who can't change what's happened in the past. Me, the person who has all these problems now. Me, the person who suffers from... We develop a helpless personal identity around all that. Rooted in the past and destined for the future.

But that just isn't the whole truth. That is not who you are.

TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Transpersonal psychology or spiritual psychology, and many of the world's spiritual traditions, see us as something far greater than that limited version we focus on in most psychological treatments and therapies.

It's not the whole of who we are. It's a construct. And it's just one dimension of ourselves.

In transpersonal psychology, that little, limited me is called the ego. The goal of many spiritual traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Yogic philosophy, is to transcend the ego.

When we transcend the ego, we orient ourselves to something far greater than ourselves, but something that we are nevertheless a part of. You might like to call it the universe, universal consciousness, nature, non-duality or even God.

The idea is that when we transcend the ego or the individual me, we connect to something far greater and experience innate inner peace and joy. We come to a place where inner joy and peace are our natural state rather than something we have to constantly work towards and search for.

MY HEALING PATH TO INNER PEACE AND ABUNDANT JOY

This is real. This is what transpersonal psychology is all about. But I don't just know this from my textbooks. I have personal experience of deep and lasting transformation from this approach.

I've always been interested in the spiritual and walking the spiritual path. In fact, throughout my life, I flipped between working on my subconscious, trauma and psychological issues to engaging in more spiritual practices like meditation, mindfulness, and yoga.

Engaging with these spiritual practices had a steady and consistent positive effect on me over many years. And then...boom!

In 2018, I had my second mystical experience. It was an extended mystical experience and transformed me in many deep psychological ways. When I was in my 20s, my inner state was one of negative emotions like anger and depression. I was easily triggered, suffered from panic attacks, and had no control over my anger.

Today, I'm a different person. I can laugh when I'm angry and still get my point across. I'm not so easily triggered, and I'm mostly pretty chilled. But it's my internal state that has changed the most. I'm at peace, I am content, I feel joy and gratitude every day. And most importantly, I can hold a loving and supportive space for my own wounds and pain, though they just rarely arise these days.

SELF-TRANSCENDENCE AS A HEALING PATH

Self-transcendence is a different and powerful approach to the healing process than therapy. And there is a growing body of evidence to support it. Sadly, despite its powerful potential for healing, it's often overlooked.

Most people don't know about it. You won't hear about it in clinical psychology, psychological therapies or psychological treatments. Most therapists have probably never even heard of it.

But in transpersonal psychology, it's a cornerstone of the healing path. And while you might think it's all a bit woo-woo, transpersonal psychology has been around for many years. It's a totally legit and recognised branch of psychology with its own section of the British Psychological Society. It's also recognised as part of the Humanistic division of the American Psychological Association.

SELF-TRANSCENDENCE AND THE HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALING

A more holistic approach to healing and transformation than therapy alone is two-pronged. It's not just about working through your trauma and wounds. It's about balancing the focus on the little me ego with a more expansive self.

It's about transcending the little me stories without bypassing them. It's about orienting ourselves towards our more holistic, transcendent, stable, non-dual, and enduring selves.

The more we orient ourselves to our more expansive, truer selves, the smaller our problems become. This is what happens in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy patients and mystical experiencers who experience quantum change.

Clinical trials have shown that as psychotherapy patients experience themselves to be a greater part of the oneness, all their problems seem to shrink to inconsequential levels. This effect is so powerful that addicts become non-addicts simply because all the little me problems seem trivial from our expanded state of consciousness.

INNER WORK

So, what is the two-pronged approach? The late John Welwood, a well-known practising Buddhist and psychotherapist, called it inner work.

Welwood suggested that for healthy healing, we need two things:

Deep psychological work into the subconscious
Transcendent spiritual work into the superconsciousness

These two branches of practice work to enhance and balance each other. If we only engage in one or the other, we run into problems. If we only do therapy work, we run the risk of becoming self-obsessed, narcissistic victims. We end up hurting ourselves and those around us.

On the other hand, if we only do spiritual work, we run the risk of spiritual bypassing and stunting our development in unhealthy ways. We end up hurting ourselves and those around us.

Welwood's inner work approach is a holistic approach that takes the whole person and their community into account.

🔶 INDIVIDUAL THERAPY AND DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY WORK

Therapy helps us develop self-awareness, heal unresolved wounds, and build emotional resilience — all of which are essential foundations for deeper inner growth. By working through psychological blocks, we create the internal stability needed to explore spiritual dimensions without bypassing our humanity. It grounds our spiritual journey in real, embodied experience.

🔶 TRANSCENDENT SPIRITUAL WORK

Transcendent spiritual practices — like meditation, breathwork, contemplation, and states of non-ordinary awareness — help us access a sense of self beyond our personal stories and psychological conditioning. They connect us to something greater: presence, stillness, or even a direct experience of the sacred. This kind of work expands our perspective, allowing us to glimpse who we are beneath the patterns we’ve spent a lifetime trying to fix.

THE DEEPER WE DIVE, THE HIGHER WE TRANSCEND

What I have noticed along my own path is that the two-pronged approach works synergistically. We will only ever transcend as far as we have descended. That means the more we work on both the transcendent and the descendent, the more we heal and come back to our true selves, resulting in real healing on deep levels of consciousness that are enduring.

This is where our temporary states of connection, belonging, trust, confidence and wisdom become more permanent underlying traits. They become like the canvas of our life, on which we are able to paint beautiful pictures.

And as a result, we feel more joy, more inner peace, and more gratitude without even really trying. These positive states of emotion enter into our beingness at will simply because we're a blank canvas, and our vibration is more aligned with these uplifting emotions.

SUPPORTING THERAPY WITH SPIRITUAL PRACTICES

Whether you're feeling stuck, experiencing a negative outcome from therapy or your therapeutic relationship, or just fed up with digging into your psyche and focusing on your trauma, starting a spiritual practice could be a powerful antidote to your dilemma.

If you're just starting out in therapy, it would be wise to develop a spiritual practice alongside the depth psychology work you're doing to help shield yourself from any potential negative effects and other unwanted side effects.

Remember, self-care is an important part of any healing journey. Meditation, especially something like loving kindness meditation, can act as a soothing balm, train your mind to be quieter, and help you orient towards a more expansive state of consciousness.

I invite you, today, to move forward on your healing journey by doing inner work guided by the two-pronged approach of therapy AND spiritual practice. Dive deep and transcend high, and you will thrive and grow in immeasurable ways.

Explore More About Spiritual Growth

Want to expand your knowledge and understanding? Check out these articles:

How Meditation Changes Your Brain And Improves Well-being
How Do You Start Your Spiritual Journey? A Guide to Finding Your Path

Too Much Therapy? This Might be a Better Approach