Is Counseling for Me? 4 Reasons to Seek Mental Health Counseling
Many of us have gotten conflicting messages about what counseling is, some of which has led to a negative stigma of seeking therapy. The reality is, we all have mental health, just like we all have physical health. Just as we are both proactive and reactive in our physical health, it benefits us to be both proactive and reactive in our mental health. Whether you are seeking to become a healthier version of you, navigate through a hard or painful work situation, process painful grief and trauma, navigate anxiety, depression, eating struggles, or any number of other situations or struggles, counseling can be part of a critical landmark in your life, marking a turning point in your experiences.
Here are a few of the many reasons to seek counseling:
You are experiencing a major life transition. Major life transitions consistently rank on the high end of stressors in the life of an individual. They shake everything up, can change how we engage with the world (i.e. when we retire), can impact our relationships, or take away our sense of security and safety. This heightens our sense of anxiety and stress, and can lead to us struggling to figure out our purpose or meaning in life. Counseling is a great way to process through the impacts and ripple effects of a life change, can lead to you learning new skills (such as new ways to manage stress or decision-make), can lead to strengthening your prefrontal cortex (where our higher level thinking and executive function/decision-making exists in our brain!), and can be a place for your to process your purpose in life. Through a mix of education, skills practice, cognitive reframing, and support, counseling can be a great way to navigate change and transition in a healthy way!
You have experienced a traumatic event or a situation where your felt sense of safety was threatened. I have a playlist on my public speaking and consulting YouTube channel on Trauma and the Nervous System, and this playlist will explain more about how the body is impacted by experiences of trauma, and how the body holds onto and stores trauma in the body. Experiences of trauma and experiences where our felt sense of safety is threatened impacts our thoughts, feelings, actions/reactions, body sensations, and how we move about in our life. Sometimes we believe that if we just ignore the experience and keep moving forward, it won’t impact us… and while that would be nice, it simply isn’t true. If you’ve experienced trauma, it is helpful to get support in processing in counseling with someone who is specifically trained in trauma. Therapies such as EMDR can be helpful in reprocessing trauma without just having to talk over and over again about what you have experienced.
You’re navigating through difficult workplace issues or experiencing harassment or discrimination in the workplace. Workplace issues, especially when it comes to harassment and discrimination in the workplace, can feel very confusing, overwhelming, and make functioning in the workplace difficult. Sometimes we are left feeling like we have to keep our heads down and keep going, while our sense of self is slowly being chipped away. We may be moving closer and closer to compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress. Whatever the reason, because we spend so much of our waking lives at work, work can have a significant impact on our mental health. Having someone to process these workplace issues with, and create a plan moving forward for yourself, is important for maintaining your mental health.
You recognize that you’re struggling with other mental health issues. Experiences such as anxiety, depression, eating issues, shifting mood states, struggles with life adjustments, and other similar experiences are common human experiences, but just because they are common doesn’t mean you have to continue to live that way. Mental health counseling can be a helpful experience for you to dig into the root of your struggle, learn different ways to process or cope, build up your brain so it functions in the healthiest way possible (i.e. shifting from your sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight) into your parasympathetic nervous system), and create plans for yourself moving forward (among other things).
Counseling is a lot of hard work. It’s not a magic fix, and it isn’t just sitting on a couch and talking about things for an hour. It takes individual work both in session and between sessions to grow, practice, observe, and change…. And the work is worth it!
This blog post provides general information and is not meant to be specific advice to any individual situation. This should not be taken as specific medical, psychological, or mental health advice, nor should this be construed as the initiation of a therapeutic client relationship. This blog post is not a substitute for mental health counseling. Please talk to your doctor before beginning any new exercise or movement-based routines and talk to your counselor regarding best treatments and techniques for your particular situation.