Maybe it’s been awhile since you felt like yourself. Maybe you feel numb, or bone crushingly sad.
Maybe you feel like a light switch that’s just on and no matter what you do, you can’t turn that switch to off. Perhaps your heart races, your thoughts race, you have trouble sleeping, and trouble eating.
And maybe, because of these feelings, you feel alone. You don’t want to talk to your friends about it; they might not understand. Or maybe you tried to talk to your friends and all you got in response was advice that didn’t help.
“Cheer up!”
“Don’t worry so much.”
“Just get snap out of it already!”
Whatever is going on, one thing is for sure: it sucks.
It sucks to feel like life is passing you by and you’ll never catch up. It sucks to feel panicked in social situations. It sucks to feel like no one understands you, like everyone else gets it and you’re left in the dark.
Individual Therapy Can Help
At some point, you probably thought to yourself (or maybe someone suggested), ‘maybe I should get some help.’
Help could mean a number of things, but when you’re feeling hopeless, overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, or lost, one of the best things you could do is find a therapist and give therapy a try.
The Benefits of Individual Therapy
It goes by many different names: therapy, counseling, psychotherapy, talk therapy, individual therapy. But no matter what you call it, it means one thing: you work one-on-one with a trained therapist in a “safe, caring, confidential environment.”
Individual therapy is sitting down with someone who’s gone through years of training in order to help people who are struggling – and help them feel better. They are trained to help people explore thoughts, feelings, habits, and experiences in order to gain a better understanding about themselves.
How Do You Know If You Need Therapy?
There are many different reasons that you might want to start seeing a therapist – to deal with past trauma, deal with anxiety or depression (or both), cope with major life transitions or events, to gain self knowledge and awareness.
If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed or unhappy, stuck on the same problem that comes up over and over again, or if you feel a general need for some extra support, then it’s probably time to look into finding a therapist.
Shaking the Stigma of Therapy
Let’s get one thing straight – you’re not crazy. You’re not broken. There’s nothing inherently wrong with you.
Life can be hard. Things change. Trauma happens.
But the most important thing to remember is this: just because you want to see a therapist, or because you saw a therapist in the past, it doesn’t mean you’re “crazy” or mentally ill. We could all use extra support sometimes.
How Therapy Can Help You Feel Better
When you work with a trained mental health professional it will help you:
Develop fresh insights about your life (and patterns)
A therapist can help you learn techniques to manage patterns of anxiety, depression, self-criticism, and other unhealthy thoughts and emotions.
Plus, when you talk about what you’re feeling and thinking with a neutral person who has no personal attachment to the outcome, you can gain new insights on old issues, helping to uncover underlying causes for what you’re feeling.
Learn tools to handle emotions and problems
Sometimes, due to various reasons, there are areas of life that feel harder to handle than others. Have you ever come across a problem or emotion over and over and feel each time like you just don’t know what to do or how to handle it?
A therapist can help give you tools to deal with those situations that feel overwhelming or just plain bad.
Improve relationships
When you feel bad day in and day out, relationships suffer. You might feel like you don’t want to bring other people down, so you stay away from, or don’t talk to, loved ones. You might lash out when your anxiety flares, saying or doing things that hurt your loved ones. Friends and family might start to feel rejected or hurt and pull away.
Feeling overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, or helpless, is hard on all types of relationships. When you start working with a therapist, he or she can help you feel better and improve your relationships with others.
Feel empowered
Probably the best benefit about starting individual therapy is the feeling of taking back control over your life.
When you’re in the throes of anxiety or depression, it can feel like life and everyone you know is passing you by – and there’s nothing you can do about it. But once you start working with a therapist, you take back control of yourself and where you’re going, and it feels like you can do anything.
Find an Effective Therapist
If you haven’t been feeling like yourself and you could use a fresh perspective about what you’re dealing with, then now is the time to find a good therapist.