People often think therapy is reserved only for those greatly suffering from significant mental health crisis such as suicidal thoughts, schizophrenia, extreme behaviors, or severe mood disruption. While therapy is a beneficial treatment for severe and persistent mental illness, it is also a great option for anyone who experiences emotions and thoughts that don’t make you feel good about yourself, hold you back from enjoying your life, or getting in the way of doing simple tasks or things you need to do. Anyone who is wanting to see some changes in their life can benefit from therapy. Therapy is a way to make sense of our emotions so we can change things within ourselves to feel better. It’s a time and space held just for you to explore yourself and make sense of your world.
So, what exactly is therapy? It’s much more than just having a space to vent about problems, get advice, have weekly breakthrough moments, and solve problems within a few sessions. While there are definitely sessions of great insights and having a space to let it all out, therapy is so much more than that. This can look like taking time to process through thoughts and emotions, making shifts in the way you think and challenge unhelpful thoughts, gain coping skills, make connections, implement lifestyle changes, reflecting inwardly, and much more.
Therapists use a variety of techniques and approaches individualized to met our client’s needs. You may have heard of popularized buzz words of “mindfulness” or “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy/CBT” and these are great but there are so many more modalities I find helpful in working with my clients. I find by including several approaches, my clients find the greatest success. I believe in the importance of your relationship with your therapist so finding one that not only specializes in your areas of challenge, but also has a style that aligns what your beliefs and values about healing. Visit my other blog pages to learn more about my favorites therapy interventions and click here to learn more about my approach to providing therapy.
Therapy is an investment of their time, effort, and energy; you get out of it what you put into it. Curious if therapy could help you?