Your mental and emotional health deserve the same care and consideration as your physical health.
If I asked you, “How do you know if you should be physically active?” the answer for almost everyone is that physical activity needs to be part of your day-to-day life.
It’s good to have the same mindset about your emotional and mental health—giving attention to those aspects of your well-being should also be part of your daily routine.
Key Takeaways
- Having good mental and emotional health takes intention. Make attention to your mental well-being part of your daily life.
- People most commonly seek the help of a professional therapist when they’re having a difficult time working through negative emotions, when they are struggling in their relationships, or when they are experiencing issues with cognitive identity.
- A productive therapeutic space is one where you can set aside the expectations you regularly put on yourself and be vulnerable.
- Commitment and honesty are key to getting the best outcomes from therapy.
How Does Therapy Support Mental Health?
Therapy supports your mental and emotional health by giving you a safe place to share your feelings and be vulnerable. It also provides you the guidance of a trained counselor to help you explore unhelpful behavioral patterns and develop positive skills and coping mechanisms.
I see patients who use therapy at all points of the emotional health spectrum. Some may be working through a trauma… others may be building the skills they need for healthier relationships… and yet others may simply want the benefit of being able to talk to a professional who they are confident will listen without judgement.
Does everyone on this list “need to see a therapist?” That’s not the right question.
A better question is, “Do I feel I will benefit from seeing a therapist?”
If the answer to that question is yes—if you feel like it will be therapeutic to sit down and talk with someone, then it’s an emotionally healthy decision to do that.
If the idea of seeing a therapist is resonating for your right now, it’s easy to book an appointment.
You may be wondering about how to improve mental health outside of therapy. There are several ways you can practice emotional self-care:
- Regular Journaling: Writing about your thoughts and the feelings associated with them can teach you to be more aware of your emotional and mental state. It can help you see where you’re lacking skills to communicate, process emotions, or nurture relationships. The act of writing itself can help you process and release negative emotions when you’re under stress.
- Socializing with Friends: Spending time with people you enjoy, who know you and care about you, who will listen to you without judgement, who you can have fun with… these things are essential to your emotional health. Intentionally making time to spend with people who help you be the best version of yourself absolutely counts as attention toward your mental health.
- Being Accountable: If there are goals you’re striving to achieve or habits your working to break (or build), having an accountability partner can help you move in the direction you want to go.
- Being Vulnerable: Whether it’s your spouse, romantic partner, a parent, or a close friend, having people you feel safe being vulnerable with is an important way of caring for your emotional well-being.
Caring for your mental and emotional health doesn’t happen only in a therapy session. It’s important to build healthy habits that support your well-being.
What Are Some of The Most Common Reasons People Decide to Go to Therapy?
People seek the help of a therapist for all sorts of reasons and due to a variety of circumstances. The reasons usually boil down to one of three things: A struggle with negative emotions; a misalignment with their cognitive identity; difficulty in relationships.
And then within these three things, I often see people who are dealing with an unhelpful trauma response—either something that happened in their past or something that occurred recently is creating patterns that may have been protective at one time but are no longer useful. That response is contributing to the situation that they need help with.
Help with Negative Emotional Responses
We all have negative emotions. They’re part of our make-up, and while they don’t feel good, they play an important role.
Where those negative emotions get to be a problem is when they begin to disrupt your ability to function in daily life.
Depression, grief, and anxiety are the most common negative emotional responses for which people seek out the help of therapist.
Issues with Cognitive Identity
People put a lot of pressure on themselves to fulfill certain roles within their lives. And when they feel like their efforts are falling short, it can cause some emotional turmoil.
For example, to use a stereotype, if you’re a man who was raised to think of himself as provider and protector, but you find yourself unemployed, that can cause issues with your cognitive identity.
Or, less stereotypically, if you’re an athlete and you suffer an injury that means you can no longer be competitive… there’s an identity struggle that comes along with that.
We all have statements and ideas we want to believe about ourselves. And sometimes life works out in a way that makes it hard to continue to believe those things.
That’s something to come to terms with—either by accepting that you need to change your view of yourself or working to change your behavior so that it aligns with your desired beliefs.
Either way, that’s something a therapist can help with.
Struggles Within Relationships
We’re made for human connection. To flourish and thrive, you need relationships. But relationships have highs and lows. If you’re having trouble in one of your important relationships—if you’re feeling lonely or like your partner doesn’t listen to you—that struggle can lead to a downturn in your emotional well-being.
Nurturing a relationship, learning how to listen and to ask for what you need, building good communication skills… these are things that people sometimes need help with.
In relationships, it can be more complicated to develop the skills you need because there’s more than one person involved, and you can only control the choices you make.
That’s where therapy can be helpful. Working with both parties in the relationship can get you on the same page, identify the patterns you each need to work on, and ultimately bring you closer so that you both find the relationship supportive and fulfilling.
That applies to couples, of course. But it also applies to families and to parent/child relationships.
Even better, the skills you build in therapy won’t just benefit the relationship you’re working on—you can apply them to nurture and strengthen relationships with friends and coworkers as well.
What Should I Expect from at My First Therapy Session?
At Family Life Counseling Center, we work hard to create a space that is safe and risk free—a therapeutic environment.
As an individual, you have expectations of yourself in pretty much every aspect of life. You have expectations about how you show up as a student, an employee, a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend, an employer… any role you occupy has associated expectations that you build in your mind.
My goal is to create a therapeutic space where you can set aside those expectations and be vulnerable. It’s a place you can say whatever your need to say, and it’s okay to say it. There’s no judgement or consequence. You can be very vulnerable, raw, real, and absolutely honest with yourself.
Now, that may sound exactly like what you’re looking for.
Or it may be something you want to experience, but you’re not sure how you’ll get there. You may find it hard to trust people and the idea of sitting down with a stranger and baring your rawest thoughts and emotions is a difficult ask.
In that case, you should be able to expect your therapist to create a low-pressure environment where you can just converse. There’s no specific thing you have to talk about. You can talk about whatever is on your mind, no matter how consequential or mundane.
Building that foundation of trust and conversation can make it possible for you to talk about the big stuff a few sessions down the line.
So come to your first session ready to make it what you need it to be—a place where you can be open and honest about whatever you’re working through or a rapport-building conversation with low stakes.
A good therapist will let you set the pace.
How Do I Get the Most Out of My Therapy Sessions?
You’ll set yourself up to get the best possible outcome from your therapy sessions if you do three things: commit to the process, be open and honest, and consistently do any homework that you and your therapist agree on.
1. Your Commitment Is Critical
Being committed to the therapeutic process and giving it time to work in your life is the most important thing you can do to get the best possible outcome.
Therapy is an investment. Even when your sessions are covered by insurance, you’re still putting in your time and energy, so you want to set yourself up for success.
I know how busy people can be. If you’re like most people, you may feel pulled in a lot of directions. That can make it hard to commit to something new, like therapy.
The usual trend is that someone comes in to see a therapist because they’re not doing so great. They open up about all the things on their mind, and that alone helps them feel better… sometimes a lot better.
There was no judgement or expectation from the therapist—they just listened. In the process, the patient learns some basic skills to help with communication and emotional regulation.
Because they’re feeling so much better, after a couple of sessions, they disappear.
But then two or three months later, they reengage, sometimes with the same therapist or sometimes with someone new. It’s great that they come back to therapy, but the gap is inefficient.
I want to help people get to a more stable place. Not just to feel momentarily better, but to feel reliably better and to feel confident they have the tools and skills they need to navigate the hard stuff.
In my experience, it takes about 12 weeks to lay a strong foundation for good emotional and mental health going forward. After that, it’s common for people to schedule additional sessions further apart for a time or to come in whenever they feel like a session would be helpful.
2. Be Honest and Vulnerable.
If you tell your doctor you don’t smoke, but you do, you’re not going to get the full benefit of your doctor’s care. The same goes for therapy. If you don’t open up about the things you’re struggling with, it will be hard for your therapist to identify the tools and skills that will help you the most.
Being honest and vulnerable also helps you and the therapist build rapport, so that you can enjoy a more genuinely therapeutic environment.
3. Do the Homework
It’s not uncommon for a therapist to suggest homework. I always treat it as optional, but doing homework is one of those things that will help you get better results faster.
Any homework will be specific and relevant to your situation. Your homework could be to go for a hike or to take a break from your phone. It could be to have a difficult conversation with your spouse or to spend some quality time with your child.
Whatever the homework is, it’s meant to nurture your emotional and mental well-being… and sometimes your relationships, too.
The 3 Ps of a Good Therapeutic Relationship
At Family Life Counseling Center, we ensure we’re creating a welcoming, productive therapeutic environment by adhering to the 3 Ps.
Personal – Feeling connected and safe with your therapist is important to having an open and honest relationship. We strive to ensure a personal connection with our patients.
Professional – When you see a therapist, you’re not talking to a friend. You’re getting much more than that. You’re getting the benefit of their professional training applied to your mental and emotional health.
Practical – We want to help you grow, which means we want to give and teach you tools and skills that will translate into the real world to make a real difference in your life.
If you think talking to a therapist would benefit your emotional and mental health, why not book an appointment to start your journey?