Have you ever thought that therapy is just for those who are “messed up”?  Do you believe that only people with “problems” need to go to therapy?  Do you view therapy as a “hush-hush, don’t tell anyone, it’s embarrassing” thing??  Would you be surprised to hear that I actually recommend you to go to therapy?  Yes, you!

First off, let me clarify… I am using the term “therapy” very loosely here.  And depending on what your current situation is, will determine which “therapeutic source” I recommend for you.

I used to think that therapy was only for people with problems, and if you had problems, that was embarrassing.  So in my eyes, therapy was something to be ashamed of.

I mean, seriously, if you can’t figure things out on your own and you need the assistance of a professional… then you’re messed up for sure.  Right?

WRONG-O!!   (Giving you The Grinch finger shake here).

It’s actually natural, normal, and HEALTHY to get help in processing your thoughts and feelings.

And can I add that it’s kinda FUN too?? Haha.

I am going to tell you not only how I found a therapist, but why I keep going.  (Ok, technically, she’s a life coach, but it’s so therapeutic for me I just call it therapy).

It all began because I had a problem.  I was not mentally well.  I could not control the thoughts in my head that told me someone in my family was going to die.  These were not completely irrational thoughts (I mean, it is always a possibility that someone can get in a car wreck, choke, get kidnapped, or stung to death by an angry mob of bees while out in the mountains picking wildflowers, eh?).  But the absolute panic and terror I felt inside was sending my adrenals on a constant roller coaster ride. 

I remember crying in panic while my husband drove my family home from the grocery store one day.  I couldn’t stand the thought of driving on the highway, and I felt through all my bones that we were going to crash, and someone would die.

It.  Was.  Awful.

You may be surprised to hear that I lived like this for a few months before I realized that I actually needed mental help.  I am a person who likes to be independent, so asking for help is not something that comes naturally or immediately for me.  It’s not that I was refusing to admit I needed help, I just didn’t consciously see it.

But I am forever grateful for the aid I received.

My sister had recommended that I go see Lori.  Lori is a gifted person, and amazingly guided me back into a healthy mental place during weekly visits, over the course of a month or two.

This type of “therapy” (when I actually had a problem) is like going to a doctor when you break your arm.  Is there any shame in the fact that you can’t reset your own bone and put a cast on it?

Of course not.  Likewise, it’s completely normal and fine to go receive help in getting your mind “reset” so to speak.

And just as there are different ways to receive physical help, there are different approaches to obtain mental help.

Depending on what you’ve got going on, there’s the phycologist, therapist, counselor, or life coach.  There’s hypnotherapy, rapid eye therapy, and who-knows-what-else-therapy!  What works for one person may not work for you.  You gotta get in tune with yourself and pick something/someone, and if you find it’s not a good fit, then try a different person or approach! 

I got lucky to find Lori on my first attempt at seeking help.

So, back to the example of a doctor helping someone who broke a bone… Once the bone is healed, there is still need for additional help via physical therapy to regain strength and range of motion. 

Or in other words, once the “problem is fixed” you still need help in the process of getting back to your regular life.

With mental health, this can look like continual guidance and support for a while, even if you feel like your “problem is solved”.  Our brains are miraculous little buggers, and they have a tendency to want to default back to “old ways of thinking”, so it’s important to exercise them well after introducing a new idea to strengthen those neuropathways.

I hope that you can see how normal and wonderful it is to receive help for your mental health.  I truly can’t speak highly enough of it!  Many of my posts have this message weaved through them because it is such a huge part of the LOVE that I have for myself and my life.

Speaking of, if reading my blog has helped you see any aspect of your life in a different way, just think what could happen if you had an individual, one-on-one, personalized session with someone to help you with your specific situations!

…Even if you don’t have any “problems”!

For example, in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, it’s important to move your body and strengthen your muscles, right?  Some people do this by going to the gym.

Well, what’s your “mental health” gym? 

There are SOOOOOO many fantastic things you can do to support your mental health, including meditating, breathing, getting fresh air, reading, yoga, cuddling a pet, gardening, journaling, expressing gratitude, dancing, exercising, doing acts of kindness… the list goes ON!

And I’m not going to say that choosing your thoughts wisely (which a therapist can help with) is the number one thing you can do to help your mental health because there truly are a number of things that contribute to it, but I do believe it is a huge part of the picture!  When you understand how your thoughts affect your feelings, and then learn how to direct your thoughts in a healthy way, you have such an advantage and kick-start to better mental health.

(BTW, when I say “mental health”, I literally just mean that in the same way you would think of “physical health”.  If you have a body, then physical health is important.  If you have a brain, then mental health is important.)

So just as you could agree that it’s important to keep up on your physical health through exercise, eating healthy, and getting enough sleep, can I convince you that it is equally important to stay up on your mental health through therapeutic self-care activities?

And just like you can either go to the gym and figure things out on your own or hire a personal trainer to zero in on helping you get the results you want, you can do the same with your mental health.

(Think how cool it is to have a personal trainer at the gym – that’s how cool it is to have a personal therapist too!)

But yeah, I must make mention of self-help therapy!  If you are pretty mentally healthy, and don’t feel the need to go to therapy, of course you don’t HAVE to sign up and pay money to receive professional help.  You can totally make wonderful strides by reading or listening to self-help material.  I’m just saying that IF you did go, I am confident that you would get something out of it.

Note the title of this post is called “Every Person Can BENEFIT From Therapy”, not “Every Person Needs Therapy”.

It’s like when you see a really good movie and you loved it so much that you want all your friends to go watch it too!  Of course they can live a happy life without ever seeing it, but you just KNOW that they would really have an enjoyable time if they did.

That’s how I view therapy.

I just love it so much!  I feel like a detective cracking a 30-year-old case when I reach into my past and come to understand how certain things have affected me my entire life.

Right now I’m in the middle of figuring out why I get so scared to talk in front of people, and it hit me the other day that when I was 8 years old, I was bearing my testimony in church (which I loved to do, and wasn’t scared) and a lady looked at me weird, which made me feel dumb. 

Hmmmm….. think that has anything do to with it?  I stopped bearing my testimony after that.  (For the record, the lady was just smiling at me, haha!  In a way that looked like she was smiling at a “cute little kid” – and in my mind, I was not a little kid, thus I was weirded out.)

But see how exciting that is??  We have NO idea how many experiences of our past are leading us to feel nervous, anxious, annoyed, or unloved.  And therapy is such a helpful resource in learning about ourselves.

Whether you could use help processing something that happened in the past, or if you’re looking for assistance in your thoughts going forward, I encourage you to give some sort of “therapy” a try.  Just remember, it’s so important to “click” with your therapist, so ask around for recommendations from like-minded people.

Believe it or not, I’m actually not trying to convince you to go to therapy!  More than anything, the purpose of this post is just to normalize the thought of therapy.  Whether it’s for you or someone else.  Please help others feel comfortable if they’re going (or want to go).  It doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with them, it just means that they are human!

The next time you hear a whisper of someone going to therapy, whether it’s general therapy, marriage counseling, or for a specific problem, give them your best Napolean Dynamite “lucky!”  Because they truly ARE lucky to be living the good life!

See ya later, I’m off to go talk to Lori…

Kayleen

SDG

If you would like a more self-help approach to figuring our your feelings, you might enjoy these 2 posts:  Fake Crying, and Real Crying.

Also, I’d love it if you shared this with a friend and invited them to subscribe to my email!  Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!