Is Therapy Helpful Or Not?
Mental health problems are on a seemingly never-ending rise. Add a global pandemic to the mix, which seems to have shaken and uncorked our mental health bottle, and it’s no wonder that more and more New Zealanders are seeking therapy and counselling to help with mental health issues like depression, anxiety and PTSD. But is therapy helpful or not? And how do you find the right one?
The answer to the question ‘is therapy helpful or not?’ is, of course, Yes. Therapy and counselling are not only incredibly powerful but also tried and tested approaches to healing and resolving chronic mental health challenges like depression and anxiety disorders.
The primary value of therapy is that it can enable us to become fully aware of the patterns of thinking that our mental health complaints are made of, as we often don’t know what it is that we are actually suffering with. In many cases, we aren’t fully aware of the stream of thoughts and concepts that combine to create our pattern of depression or anxiety.
Regardless of how you choose to manage your mental health challenges, you stand little chance of getting to the right solutions if you have yet to establish what the actual problem is. Working with a trained therapist or counsellor enables you to draw on the experience and expertise of somebody who knows how to unpack the hidden unconscious patterns that drive conditions like depression and anxiety.
A good therapist should be able to build excellent rapport and trust with you, as these are the cornerstones of safely unpacking your most personal patterns of being. The therapy process only becomes effective once there is a strong sense of confidence in the integrity of the therapist. It is important not to pursue therapy unless you are working with someone for whom you feel a strong sense of trust.
In addition to carefully unpacking and examining the true nature of patterns like depression and anxiety, a good therapist should be able to assist with using strategies to address and actually heal uncovered patterns. As important as discovering the reasons behind depressive and anxious patterns are, finding realistic solutions is essential. Solutions to anxiety and/or depression are centred around coping techniques, which cognitive behavioural therapy is particularly good at. Strategies for resolving trauma and healing emotional wounds are about resolving internal wounds; EMDR is particularly good at that.
Regardless of how you choose to treat or alter your mental health challenges, you stand little to no chance of getting the right solutions if you have yet to establish what the actual problem is. Working with a trained therapist or counsellor enables you to draw on the experience and expertise of somebody who knows how to unpack the hidden unconscious patterns that drive conditions like depression and anxiety.
A good therapist should be able to build excellent rapport and trust with you, as these are the cornerstones of safely and carefully unpacking your most personal patterns of being. The therapy process only becomes fully possible once there is a strong sense of confidence in the integrity of the therapist. It is important not to pursue therapy unless you are working with someone with whom you feel a strong sense of trust; it’s too important to do therapy any other way.
In addition to carefully unpacking and examining the true nature of patterns like depression and anxiety, a good therapist should be able to assist with using strategies to address and heal uncovered patterns. As important as discovering the reasons behind depressive and anxious patterns are, finding realistic solutions is essential. Solutions to anxiety and/or depression are centred around coping techniques, which cognitive behavioural therapy is particularly good at. Strategies for resolving trauma and healing emotional wounds are about resolving internal wounds; EMDR is particularly good at that.
The great but often tricky thing about finding the right therapist is that therapy isn’t really one thing. A therapist or counsellor can use a comprehensive range of tools and techniques, and every therapist has the right to use these at their discretion. So unlike when you go to two different dentists who pretty much use the same set of tools when you go from one therapist or counsellor to another, you may find more than one completely different approach. This can actually be a good thing because it means that the different therapy styles find their way to the people for whom they are a good match. It may be necessary to work your way through some different therapists and find a style that is a good fit for you.
It is a sad fact that, although we struggle significantly with mental health as a topic, we also struggle with finding enough good people to assist with our mental health challenges. One of the biggest challenges New Zealanders face today is finding a therapist who has the time to make them an appointment. This drives many people to call under-equipped GPs as their training doesn’t cover the intricacies of managing mental health issues. And even if it did, they don’t have the time.
In addition to finding a good therapist to help you with your mental health, it is good to be open to alternative forms of treatment, self-care and even technology to support you on your journey. More and more people are turning to alternatives to therapy, or at least additions to therapy such as meditation, float tanks and brainwave entrainment. This is excellent news because when faced with a powerful rising tide of anxiety, depression and trauma, it is inevitable that we need many different tools to help manage.
So again, to answer that question ‘Is therapy helpful or not?’ the answer is YES.
The great news is when it comes to mental health challenges, none of us is actually ‘broken’. We are just more in need of the right support, the right tools, and the right self-care.
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