Honouring the Courage to Return: Respect, Strength and Renewal in Therapy After Past Attempts
Seeking therapy after previous attempts takes courage. I’m deeply inspired by the strength it takes to reach out after experiences that may have felt discouraging, invalidating, or only partly helpful. This article honours that bravery, reframes the journey and offers powerful techniques and prompts to support those who find themselves stuck in depression or overwhelm, longing for real change.
Why Returning Matters: Honouring Your Resilience
Perhaps you’ve tried therapy before, once, twice, more. Maybe you’ve felt that while it kept you afloat for a while, you’re still treading water, trapped in a negative space or shadowed by depression. You might be thinking, “I just don’t want to feel this way anymore” or “What’s the point in trying again?”
It’s vital to recognise: your past therapy experiences are not failures but testimonies to your resilience and capacity for hope. They may have taught survival skills, offered moments of relief, or revealed what doesn’t work for you. The readiness to try again is a profound act of self-respect, deserving of the highest regard.
Take a quiet moment to ask yourself: “What parts of me are hoping things can feel different this time? What do they most long for?”
Reframing the Narrative: Why Things Can Change Now
Therapy is not a one size fits all journey, as well as each therapist is a unique individual, just like us. Each attempt can unearth different needs, wounds, or insights depending on your place in life. Growth is never linear; healing is often cumulative. By reframing your narrative from “I failed at therapy” to “I am still searching for the care, methods, or timing that meets my needs,” you empower yourself to step forward with compassion and self-trust.
What strengths have you demonstrated, seen or unseen in your previous therapy journeys?
Core Therapies and How They Can Support You
Below, I offer three practical techniques from each of Schema Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Psychodynamic Therapy. Each set is tailored to address the feeling of being “stuck” in depression or a negative emotional space and includes inquiry prompts for you to reflect on, discuss, or bring to your next session.
Schema Therapy: Confronting Deep Patterns of Hurt
Schema Therapy explores persistent, self-defeating life patterns (schemas) that originate in early experiences. It focuses on identifying underlying themes, healing unmet needs and supporting new, life-giving behaviours.
Schema Identification and Naming
- Work with your therapist to pinpoint the critical beliefs or “schemas” driving your feelings like abandonment, mistrust, or unworthiness.
Can you recall moments when you first remember these painful feelings? What words would you use to describe them?
- Reflective Question: How might these deep patterns have helped you cope in the past, even as they now cause pain?
Limited Reparenting/Imagery Rescripting
Imagine a nurturing figure (your therapist, or a compassionate self) stepping in during childhood memories of distress to provide comfort, protection and new possibilities.
If a truly caring adult were with you in those memories, what would you have needed them to say or do?
- How does it feel to imagine a new, supportive response to that old pain?
Behavioural Pattern-Breaking Experiments
Small, planned experiments challenge old patterns (like avoidance, isolation, or self-blame), helping you try out new, life-affirming actions.
What is a tiny, safe step outside your usual pattern you might take this week?
- If you did this, what might change, however subtle, about your view of yourself?
Internal Family Systems (IFS): Befriending Your Inner Parts
IFS recognises that our psyche is made up of multiple “parts” or subpersonalities. Some carry the burden of deep pain and vulnerability, these are known as exiles. To keep that pain from overwhelming us, protective (Manager) parts step in. Managers work proactively to prevent hurt by keeping us in control, organised, or guarded, while firefighters act reactively, rushing in when painful emotions surface, often distracting us through intense behaviours or quick fixes. Although they operate in very different ways, all of these parts are striving to protect us and help us survive.
Parts Mapping
Create a visual or written map of the different parts within you. Who’s feeling depressed, who’s criticising, who’s longing and who’s trying to help.
Which part of you is most active when you feel stuck? What does it want you to understand?
- What positive intention might even your most critical or avoidant parts hold for you?
Self-to-Part Dialogue
Cultivate a compassionate, curious stance (“Self energy”) to dialogue with your inner parts rather than fight or deny them.
If you gently ask the depressed part what it needs, what might it say?
- How does it feel to listen to this part rather than trying to get rid of it?
Unblending Practice
Learn to notice when you are “blended” with a particularly strong part and gently practice stepping back, observing rather than merging.
How does it shift things to see depression as a part, not the whole of who you are?
- Am I my depression, or am I experiencing depression as one part of me?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Moving from Stuckness to Movement
ACT helps people move away from fighting their inner pain and instead build a life aligned with their values even when difficult thoughts and feelings are present.
Defusion Techniques
Learn to notice thoughts (“I am worthless,” “Things will never change”) as mental events, not truths.
When a distressing thought shows up, can you add “I’m having the thought that…” before the statement? How does this change your relationship with the thought?
- What happens when you hold your thoughts lightly, rather than treating them as commands?
Values Clarification
Slow down to clarify what truly matters to you, apart from depression or struggles, gentle curiosity for your needs, loves and dreams.
Which small actions could bring you even a tiny bit closer to what matters, despite how you feel?
- If depression lifted for five minutes, what would you want to do, feel, or say?
Committed Action
Support yourself in taking value-driven, tiny steps, increasing your sense of agency and opening new possibilities.
What changes when you turn toward what matters, rather than away from discomfort?
- What is one small action that’s consistent with your values even if your mind says it’s pointless?
Psychodynamic Therapy: Deepening Insight and Healing Old Wounds
Psychodynamic therapy seeks to bring unconscious patterns, conflicts and relational wounds into awareness, often exploring the origins of depression in early experiences and relationships.
Free Association and Noticing Patterns
Practice sharing thoughts and memories as they come, without censoring, allowing hidden themes to emerge in the presence of an empathic therapist.
What is on your mind right now, even if it feels trivial or unrelated?
- How might these threads connect back to past hurts or familiar feelings?
Exploring Repetition Compulsion
Gently inquire into repeated life patterns (in relationships, self-image, or coping) that may replay old wounds in new forms.
Are there situations or relationships where you notice yourself stuck in old roles or responses?
- How might these patterns have once protected you, even if they now cause pain?
Working Through the Therapeutic Relationship
Use the therapy relationship as a safe container to explore fears, longings, frustrations, and hope that arise between you and your therapist, illuminating core relational wounds and promoting healing.
What is it like to talk about these things with your therapist? Are there feelings or worries about how they will respond?
- How can acknowledging what happens between you and your therapist open the door to new ways of relating to yourself and others?
Supporting Yourself Through Stuckness: Open Reflection
You may feel exhausted by the struggle. It’s tempting to believe that if previous therapy hasn’t worked, nothing will. Yet, it’s in the willingness to be curious, to reframe therapy as a dynamic process, and to honour each step (however faltering) that deeper transformation is possible.
What do you most wish your therapist could understand about your experience?
Have there been flickers of hope or relief in the past? What supported that?
What would it take to feel safe enough to try something different now?
The path is yours, and no one else’s. Your “stuckness” is not your fault, nor is it permanent.
The Way Forward: Finding a Therapy Right for You
If you are considering reaching out for therapy again, know that there are skilled, compassionate practitioners across Australia offering both in-person and online support who specialise in Schema Therapy, ACT, IFS, Psychodynamic modalities and more. These experts understand the complexity of past disappointments and the hope that brings you back.
Whether you seek help as an individual, couple, or family, connecting with someone who resonates with your needs and is respectful of your journey can make all the difference.
If you are ready, or even just curious to try again, you deserve a therapist who honours the depth of your efforts, adapts their approach to your uniqueness and joins you with expertise, warmth and respect.
I invite you to browse and book a session with one of the experienced holistic mental health practitioners at Connecting Mental Health. We’re here to walk alongside you, every step of the way.
Contact us if you have any questions or feedback.
May your path to wellbeing be supported by both wisdom and compassion.
Article written by Jono Derkenne, Accredited Mental Health Social Worker