People go to therapy for many reasons. A challenging life event, trauma, volatile emotions, relationship problems, poor mental health: all can prompt someone to seek it out.
Whatever the reason, it can be difficult to decide when and if therapy is right for you.
If you’re reading this, now’s probably the right time. If you’re considering therapy, something is likely bothering you and you want help. Consider this your sign to reach out.
If you’re still unsure, keep reading.
Why therapy?
Sometimes, our minds work against us. Therapy can help you understand why you think, feel, or act how you do and give you the skills you need to think, feel, or act in healthier ways.
This includes helping you:
- identify, understand, and overcome internal obstacles
- identify and challenge thought patterns and beliefs that are holding you back
- improve your mental health
- cope with mental illness
- and create lasting changes to your thoughts and behavior that can improve all areas of your life.
When your mental health is suffering
Everyone experiences negative emotions in difficult situations — like sadness after a breakup or anxiety before a big life event. But when do these feelings become problematic? When you have poor mental health.
Mental health and mental illness are distinct, but related, concepts. Mental health refers to the inner resources you have to handle life’s ups and downs. You have good mental health if you enjoy life; feel connected to others; cope well with stress; and have a sense of purpose, a sense of self and strong relationships.
If you have poor mental health, it can be hard to adapt to changes like a breakup, move, loss or parenthood. Therapy can help you improve your mental health, develop resilience and maintain a state of well-being.
Mental illness refers to distressing disturbances in thoughts, feelings and perceptions that interfere with daily life. There are different kinds of mental illness, each characterized by different thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
- Hopelessness — feeling stuck, unmotivated or helpless.
- Apathy — feeling uninterested in things that used to give you satisfaction or pleasure.
- Anger — feeling rage or resentment, especially frequently or disproportionately.
- Stress — feeling overwhelmed, unable to cope, unwilling to rest or like everything is hard (even if you know it shouldn’t be).
- Guilt — feeling ashamed, undeserving of good things or deserving of bad things.
- Anxiety — worrying about what has or might happen or having disturbing intrusive thoughts.
- Exhaustion — sleeping more than usual, having difficulty getting out of bed or lacking energy during the day.
- Insomnia — having difficulty falling or staying asleep.
Both poor mental health and mental illness are equally good reasons to seek therapy.
Ask yourself: Am I having trouble dealing with life challenges?
If the answer is yes, therapy might be for you.
People often cope with the feelings listed above in different ways. Some gain or lose a lot of weight. Others might seek out or do things that are unhealthy for them, like entering a toxic relationship, engaging in dangerous activities, developing an unhealthy habit or procrastinating. Others might isolate themselves from friends and family, or catastrophize and ruminate on negative experiences.
However it manifests, mental illness often gets worse if left untreated. It can have very real impacts on your life, potentially leading to unemployment, broken relationships, poor physical health, substance abuse, homelessness, incarceration or even suicide.
Ask yourself: Is mental illness negatively affecting my functioning or well-being?
If the answer is yes, therapy might be for you.
What if therapy didn’t work before?
Many people put off going to therapy because they don’t think their problems are serious enough, but you don’t need a big, deep reason to start therapy.
Some people go to therapy to learn more about themselves. Some, to improve their skills, relationships or productivity. Others go for help reaching their goals or because they aren’t happy and don’t know why. Any of these are good reasons to start therapy, even if they don’t seem like “problems” in a traditional sense. You can go to therapy just because there’s something about yourself or your life you’d like to explore.
Therapy is a process. Whether psychotherapy works for you depends on many factors, such as time, effort and your psychologist.
There’s no quick fix for mental health. Symptoms can take weeks, months or even years to improve. Although this can be frustrating or disheartening, for therapy to work, you have to give it time.