We all come across the phrase “you need therapy” or “you need help” quite often these days. These phrases are usually used as an insult, a demeaning gesture, or simply as a bad joke.
As a professional mental health therapist, I find it unsettling to hear that people still sees therapy with a derogatory point of view. It is not only wrong to think about going to therapy this way, but it is also a highly stigmatizing view. We should be thinking about the benefits of therapy in our lives rather than belittling its potential.
Most people think and talk negatively about therapy. I’ve noticed that many of us do not actually know the reasons why one might consider going to therapy for in the first place! Many believe they can just talk to their loved ones and think therapy is reserved only for extreme circumstances.
To clear up these misconceptions, here are 10 valid reasons why you might consider to therapy. None of the reasons are an indictment of you as a person.
- You are having trouble processing something in your life
Have you been unable to process what you are feeling or struggling with? Whenever you have repeated thoughts and emotions like ‘I wish I had the words for this,” or “I need to talk this out more,”- these indicate that therapy can help you get unstuck. Therapy is a place for you to work through feelings, thoughts, and challenging situations. It can be the mirror to help you see yourself a bit more accurately through the eyes of someone trained. This can help to break through the limited, tunnel-vision perspective of you are and what you’re going through.
2. Your mood, relationships and other areas of your life are being affected but you don’t know why
Are you getting annoyed easily with your friends or family, even over the smallest of things? Are you becoming enraged with workload, academic pressure or even by your inbox with every passing day? Paying attention to everyday stressors and how that’s changed overtime can help you to find out whether therapy might be helpful for you. Take notes of the major changes in your mood, behaviors, sleep pattern, eating habits, relationships and decision making. Also taking notes on your connection with alcohol and drug use can guide you to find out. Therapy can help to eliminate some of these root causes. You may learn to incorporate more adaptive coping skills so that you can maintain a healthy and balanced lifestyle.
3. You seem to be repeating patterns in your life
This is a bit different than feeling stumped as it relates to a specific behavior which you cannot seem to quit. One sign I hear often is repeatedly engaging in a behavior that the person can intellectually or rationally recognize isn’t helpful or healthy, but they find themselves doing it anyway to their own detriment whether that be professional, personal, or relational. Another related sign is feeling a lack of control in their life generally or over their behaviors. This lack of control could show up in various areas in your life from substance use to relationships to general impulsivity. It is essential to break these patterns and establishing new ones. Often there are roots and contributing factors and triggers underlying patterns that we don’t even realize until someone else helps us do a little digging to figure it out, which is something a therapist is trained to do.
4. You don’t feel like you’re functioning at 100% or anywhere close to it
All of us can feel sad or angry or tired but it doesn’t always interfere with our life, relationships, or goals. A change in our optimal functioning is a red flag that we need help. If it typically is a breeze for you to get up in the mornings or complete your to-dos throughout the day, but now it feels like a ton of bricks are lying on you while getting out of bed, or you are agitated at everybody while you’re completing your errands, it means you’re functioning differently than your baseline. That is proof right there! These changes in your mood or can affect your concentration decision-making and even your memory. Therapy helps you figure out why these changes have occurred and how to get back to functioning more optimally. For example, if you are having trouble getting out of bed, you might purposely schedule activities that are pleasurable throughout your day to get you going, using a technique known as behavioral activation.
5. You need help working through difficult family or relationship dynamics
Present and former family challenges make for excellent exploration in therapy. Be it an individual or group setting. For example, you might want to discuss your relationships in individual therapy to better understand the causes for some of your own behavioral patterns and learn to navigate those relationships in a healthy way with boundaries and improved communication skills. Or if you are dealing with someone that’s causing strain in your relationship, it might make sense to go to family or couple’s counseling for an objective mediator. A skilled family therapist can facilitate productive conversation and problem solving among family members to improve interpersonal communication and behavioral patterns. Most people find family therapy or couple’s therapy beneficial in healing parent-child or sibling relationships, guiding new parents through postpartum challenges or helping couples enrich the love they share, creating healthier, more loving environment.
6. You might have experienced a trauma
Many of us experienced tragedy beyond our control especially recently including death, accidents, assault, and bullying, among many others. Trauma is something that could interfere with functioning in our interpersonal relationships, be triggered on an unexpected timeline, and even manifest itself physically. Therapy can assist with exploring and processing the emotional impact, helping you understand your emotional and psychosomatic response to triggers, opportunities for clarity and behavior and thoughts modification. This includes processing racism, colorism, gender discriminations, and microaggressions ideally with a culturally sensitive therapist who makes you feel safe, seen, and heard. Having someone who is trained to talk out such issues is essential for a minoritized person to survive in this world that is too often intentionally fracturing to the psyche of minoritized people.
7. You are anticipating or currently going through a major life transition
We get anxious about change like moving, starting school, or starting a new job. Right now, many of us may be anxious about returning to work. If we haven’t already or adjusting to whatever this new normal looks like therapy can be a great tool for easing you through these big changes so that you don’t have to try to power through them solo. Therapy offers an objective, outside view of your thoughts, feelings, and emotions to help you feel less anxious and less overwhelmed about the change or transition. It helps you prepare for what to expect and make it a softer landing when the change does occur. Challenges and changes will always happen but learning how to approach them in a rational way can be done through therapy.
8. You are struggling with expectations like the pressure to be constantly productive
Even high functioning high achievers who can go about their day-to-day responsibilities without disruptions can still benefit from therapy. Often these people have learned very well by importance of self-control and being responsible, but there can be too much of a good thing. People who have unrelated self-expectations often feel that they can never relax and that there is too little pleasure in life. They may even feel lonely from believing they can only show the achieving and responsible side of themselves to others. Therapy can be a place to work on boundaries, establish a better work life balance, and learn to connect with others. Perhaps most important, it can make you more understanding of the imperfections of being human. Therapy can also teach skills to help deal with self-criticism and asserting your needs.
9. You feel overwhelmed
Overwhelmed is a big and broad sign that therapy could be very helpful for you. Overwhelm itself can be caused by so many things, from relationships an external circumstance to your own emotions. When you feel overwhelmed you often can’t process and cope with things and a therapist can help you do both. You may learn to identify and understand all those feelings you’re having, through therapy. For example, maybe you are overwhelmed with anger and irritability lately which is certainly not uncommon these days. Mental health professionals help you to identify the external and internal factors that are contributing to the irritability. Do you need to take more self-care breaks so that you don’t feel as on edge? Therapy is a process that provides skills for working through difficult feelings and situations to improve your well-being and relationships.
10. You could use an unbiased confidential person to talk to
People often say that talking to a therapist is the same as talking to a friend, but it isn’t. A therapist is unbiased and neutral, does not get exhausted or burdened by your coming to them, and is someone you can absolutely trust to keep what you say confidential. They have no hidden agenda or biased desires. Therapists just hold your best interest. You will not get any advice or explanation of what to do, rather, you will be helped through summarizing repetition, rationalizing, normalizing or by stringing together some of the things you are sharing with the therapist. This is very different from the type of conversation you would have with a friend. Sometimes you may want to talk through these things with a friend, but you feel a lack of support from your loved ones, or you have tried to discuss this with them, and they weren’t helpful. In such situations therapy can be of great help to you.
As you can see from the list, we don’t need a diagnosable disorder to see a therapist and benefit from that support. Therapy is there to help you navigate through difficult times and so many people have experienced difficult times in the past two years.
Aastha therapists respect your individual experiences. We are here to normalize your experience and help you verbalize what you might need some help you to get on the right path. What’s better than spilling your deepest, darkest secrets to someone who won’t judge you? If after all of these, you are still questioning whether therapy is right for you, just know this: there is no wrong time to ask for help!