Your Mental Health Matters: Exploring the Benefits of Therapy

Health is wealth, and when you are sound both physically and mentally, you’ve got all the happiness in the world. If there’s a spike in the anxiety levels, don’t pass it off as one of your mood swings. 

A lady in her 40s who had come to me the other day explained how jittery she would get after the birth of her fourth child. She kept delaying things with the hope that this was one of her postpartum phases and would pass soon. She had a severe nervous breakdown at her workplace that made her realize she needed a therapist’s help. 

Before getting into why you should take mental health seriously and even the effectiveness of therapy, let me help you get to know me. That’ll make us connect better. 

Becky Lindquiste, that’s me, will be your guide for now and assist you in knowing the effectiveness of mental health and the benefits of therapy to boost your morale. If I were to brief you about myself, well, I’ve been associated with the nitty gritty of psychology for more than a decade now. 

Of the various settings I’ve been associated with, one of my most significant contributions has been in Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin. Well, there’s more to know about me, and you could always connect with me. 

How Therapy Benefits Your Mental Health?

The rat race in this fast-paced world can get overwhelming, often affecting our mental and emotional well-being. While some could find it a mammoth task to cope with the day-to-day stress, in others, the prolonged stress may manifest into depression.  

People often pass the mental traumas as just another testing time. That’s where they go wrong. The usefulness of therapy for your mental health is umpteen, depending on the kind of therapy you’ve opted for.  

If it’s individual therapy, it involves a one-to-one session with you and your therapist, where you indulge in talk therapy. Here are the ways: 

• It will help you to improve your self-exploration and self-awareness skills.
• You’ll feel more empowered and develop new insights about your life.
• Making choices in life can sometimes be challenging. Individual therapy would help you identify your priorities and choose wisely.
• Therapy would help instill confidence.
• You’ll even learn strategies to stay strong in distress and cope with difficult situations.
• Sometimes, you need to catch up in communicating with the other person and letting them know of your standpoint. Establishing boundaries is essential to maintain trust and respect in a relationship. Individual therapy helps to sharpen that skill.

When all is not well in the family and things get difficult to handle, family therapy would be a better alternative. Sometimes, getting on the same page with your kin becomes a mammoth task. This is when you may need outer intervention to enhance your communication with your loved ones. Here’s when family therapy comes into play, and may benefit in the following ways: 

• It helps to improve your strained relationships with your family.
• When the entire family is dealing with common grief – perhaps the death of a near one; family therapy may help you and your family to recover from the loss better.
• There might be a financial loss in the family, where one or many members could be going through unemployment; the entire family or a member may have to shift base and move to a different location.

All these sometimes get overwhelming. Going for family therapy helps to sort these issues better. 

• When there’s a member of the family suffering from any chronic illness like cancer, stroke, or any autoimmune disease, it’s challenging for the entire family to cope with the crisis.

When you seek a therapist’s attention, they will help you and your family to look at things more broadly and positively. 

• Counseling the entire family will be beneficial and more effective when any member of the family is going through anxiety disorders, mood issues, personality disorders, schizophrenia, etc.

When one member is affected, it affects the entire family. Family therapy would be needed to help the members deal with the situation with patience and perseverance. 

If the problem is between you and your fiancee or spouse, a couple’s therapy would help better your understanding. It’s not that you must wait for your paths to clash and seek a therapist’s help. 

You could do that at any point in time to avoid future conflicts. But, when things go haywire, you shouldn’t delay seeking a therapist’s help. An ice-breaking session might be what both of you need to mend your relationship. A couple therapy would help in many ways: 

• It will help to strengthen your bond.
• When the trust factor in your relationship is missing, talking it out may help to retain the lost trust.
• It will help you resolve conflict and restore intimacy, perhaps lacking in your relationship due to the ongoing turmoil.
• Communication is a crucial factor to keep a relationship going. If your relationship lacks it, seeking a therapist’s assistance could help. The more you speak, the better it helps to untangle the knots in your relationship.

Ask A Question

Now, it’s your turn to ask me a question and help you find a satisfactory answer. Here are some of the common queries most of my clients come up with. I’m sure these questions may be in your mind as well. For more queries, do get in touch at TherapyJourney.co.

1. When should I go to the therapist? 

When life becomes overwhelming to the extent that it comes in the way of a hassle-free life, you may need a therapist’s help to sort things out. 

It could even be that your daily woes prevent you from leading a quality life or make you avoid places or people. You feel like being more to yourself. You feel alone and dejected and wish to rebel against everything. All these issues need a therapist’s attention at the earliest.

2. Will online therapy help? 

With the advancement in technology, the popularity of online therapy has been immense. It may not be possible for you to reach out to the therapist in person. With online or tele-therapy, that problem is solved. 

You could choose a therapist of your choice, even if they aren’t close to your location. A study conducted with 62 participants in 2014 highlighted that online therapy was as effective as face-to-face therapy to treat depression. However, for serious psychiatric illnesses, online therapy may not be effective. 

Conclusion

When things are difficult for you to manage, and you feel that you are losing it, don’t delay in seeking help. You could always go to a friend or someone you trust. But in times of acute crisis, you need someone who isn’t emotionally attached to you and will be unbiased and non-judgemental while listening to you. Here’s where a therapist comes into play. A healthy body leads to a healthy mind. So, here’s wishing you a Happy Healing!