Can You Benefit from Therapy?
Therapy is one of the main treatments for improving mental health, yet there are numerous reasons why people have never given it a try. Unfortunately, therapy has always been stigmatized in a way that deters people from getting the help they could benefit from. We have been taught the idea that we must be strong and do everything on our own. Some even believe that partaking therapy is weak or that it should be seen as a failure. However, if there are tools available to us that can improve our quality of life, why wouldn’t we want to take advantage of them?
There is a common belief that therapy is only for people with serious mental health conditions. While therapy can help greatly with these things, there are so many other benefits from it. Even if you aren’t facing incredibly challenging life experiences, you may still be able to benefit from talking to a therapist. The stress and demands of everyday life are reason enough to seek counseling in some form. The great news about therapy in our day and age is there are so many different ways to have therapy fit your lifestyle. You can try group therapy, couples therapy, or tele-therapy. All of these can fit into patients’ specific schedules.
When asking yourself if you could benefit from therapy, there are many factors you can consider. If you are considering taking this step in your mental health journey, ask yourself the following questions to see if your life could benefit from therapy.
Do you want to improve your relationship with yourself?
They say that the most important relationship you have is the one with yourself. But in most cases, we are the hardest on ourselves. We tear ourselves apart by engaging in comparisons, negative self-talk, and other harmful behaviors. Therapy can help you learn to have more compassion for yourself. Having compassion for yourself can change how we see ourselves and the world. Therapy can also help you challenge negative beliefs you may hold about yourself. Sometimes, these beliefs are so deep-rooted that you may need a therapist to help you re-write the things you believe about yourself. Improving your relationship with yourself will affect almost every part of your life.
Do you want to heal wounds/traumas that could be affecting other parts of your life?
When challenging events come up in life, it can be easy to tuck them away or brush them off. This is a natural survival instinct and can certainly help move forward with different things. However, burying wounds and traumas can be incredibly dangerous. Both can manifest into struggles later on in life and serious mental health conditions. It’s important to work through wounds when they come up instead of letting them get buried down. Therapy can help patients work through traumas in a safe and comforting place. Therapists will know the appropriate methods to treat whatever specific trauma the patient is dealing with. They can also help patients break the pattern of pushing challenges down and dealing with them head-on. Depending on the severity of the trauma, there may be different ways that therapists will approach the treatment.
Do you want to improve your decision-making skills?
Decision-making can be a frustrating process for many, causing stress and anxiety every time. Most of the time, when we are struggling with decision-making, it can be traced back to a lack of trust in ourselves. We don’t trust ourselves to make the “best” decision possible. Therapy can help strengthen your decision-making skills by empowering you to trust yourself. Therapists can help you work through certain decisions and teach you the best way to minimize second-guessing after the fact. An impartial party can help you make decisions based on your values versus basing them on your fears.
Do you want to improve your communication in interpersonal relationships?
We spend so much time in our lives with other people. Our relationships are one of the things that can bring the greatest joy into our lives. However, because humans are all a little different, there are bound to be challenges that arise when people disagree. Therapy can help with this because it can improve your relationships by learning how you show up in them. You can learn strategies for setting boundaries, which will improve the overall quality of them. Therapy can also help with deciding when it might be healthier to leave certain relationships.
Do you want to improve your mood and overall happiness?
As humans, we can sometimes believe that we do not have the power to change certain things. That some things will always be a certain way. But this isn’t always the case. When it comes to improving your mood and happiness, there are always ways to enhance them. Therapy can help us remember that our thoughts, moods, and behaviors are all related to each other. Therapists can help you come up with habits and routines that will lead to improvement in your mood. Therapy can also be a magnificent way to explore the things that make us truly happy in life. Once you discover what those things are, you and your therapist can find ways to integrate them into your life. This is much easier said than done, but these small changes over time can make a big difference in how we feel.
Do you want to improve your self-esteem?
Having confidence in yourself is something that will affect many different areas of your life. It affects how you show up at work, in relationships, and the world in general. How you see yourself often shapes how you see the world and the opportunities in it. Oftentimes, we think that the solution to all of our problems is changing things about ourselves. But in reality, we need to change the way that we perceive ourselves. Therapy can help to improve self-esteem by challenging negative core beliefs, traumas, and biases. Therapists can help provide an impartial opinion that can help you see that your beliefs may not be true. Rewriting deep-rooted beliefs can be rigorous, but it will always be worth it. Believing in yourself and your abilities will change almost every area of your life.
Do you want to have extra support during life transitions?
Even during positive life transitions, stress can be a normal part of it. Change can be tough for people, and needing a little extra support is nothing to be ashamed of. Therapy can help patients who are going through stressful transitions by allowing them a space to talk about how they are feeling about whatever change they are going through. This can help the changes to be smoother and easily incorporated into daily life.
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, you could likely benefit from therapy. Therapy can almost always help to improve our lives in some way. Therapy can help us to improve the quality of our relationships and overall lives. Even if you have never thought about the possibility of therapy, we urge you to give it a try. You are worth the effort of improving your mental health. If you are ready to start working with a therapist, we are here for you. Contact us today.
References
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/psychotherapies
Keywords: teletherapy, online counselor [Michigan], shrink, mental health