What Cures in Therapy Is Truth…
TL;DR: Therapy helps when we stop avoiding what we fear. Research consistently shows that facing what triggers our anxiety leads to genuine improvement. In practice, this means working through the tension between feelings, anxiety, and defence until what’s true can finally be felt and expressed. Truth restores coherence to the mind and body, the moment of quiet honesty when something long denied can finally be seen.
A moment of clarity, seeing yourself clearly after years of hiding from what’s true.
The Healing Power of Truth in Psychotherapy
We often imagine people come to therapy for comfort, to be soothed, reassured, or given strategies to feel better. But what actually heals is truth. Not abstract truth, not moral truth, felt truth. The kind that dismantles self-deception and reconnects you to what’s real inside. It’s rarely gentle. It often arrives as a tremor.
Why Facing Anxiety Leads to Real Change
Psychologist Jordan Peterson once said, “What cures in therapy is truth.” He pointed out that across decades of psychotherapy research, the evidence is overwhelming: when people confront what makes them anxious, rather than avoiding it, they get better. From a psychodynamic perspective, that’s the heartbeat of the work. Anxiety signals that something important is being avoided: a feeling, a memory, a wish, or a fear. The defences we build to stay safe: humour, intellectualisation, withdrawal, over-control, all function to keep us away from that truth.
How Defences Hide What Hurts
In therapy, those defences start to crack, not because the therapist attacks them, but because the room becomes safe enough to face what’s been hidden. That’s when the nervous system begins to recalibrate. The energy that once went into repression becomes available for life.
The FAD Model: Feelings, Anxiety and Defence
This is the essence of my own FAD model: Feelings, Anxiety, Defence. The sequence always unfolds in that order. First, we feel something emerging. Anxiety rises to block it. Then the defence appears to manage the anxiety. Therapy helps us reverse the sequence: become conscious of the defence, face the anxiety, and finally contact the underlying feeling, the truth that was buried.
When the Nervous System Begins to Heal
Truth doesn’t arrive as enlightenment. It arrives as trembling. As a deep breath. As the moment someone says, “I didn’t want to see it, but it’s true.” That’s when integration begins. The mind and body stop splitting.
Are you acting out a ‘life lie? - ’skip to 6:55 in the video - what cures in therapy is truth
Staying With the Truth Until It Transforms You
So when we talk about “healing,” we’re really talking about learning to stay with the truth long enough for it to transform us. The moment you stop running from what you fear, the system reorganises. In that sense, therapy isn’t about becoming happier, it’s about becoming more real. And truth, though it sometimes hurts, is the only thing that ever truly sets the psyche free.
What Cures in Therapy is Truth
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Because therapy works by uncovering what’s been avoided. When defences soften, anxiety rises before the truth integrates; that temporary discomfort is often the sign that real change is happening.
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It’s not about confessing facts or moral truths. It’s about contacting felt truth, emotional honesty about what you actually feel, want, or fear, beneath the stories you tell yourself.
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When we stop avoiding reality, the mind and body stop fighting themselves. Energy that was locked in repression becomes available for living. That’s the real healing process.