Get You Some Therapy

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I’ve written about my struggles with mental health before, in my post Foggy Brain. I want to write now about my efforts to improve and to feel better.

There’s a lot that can go into mental health treatment. On my mission, when I was suffering, there was a lot of trial and error to get me on medication. Some made me worse, but eventually we found something that helped, at least for a little while. I also had to talk to a counselor over the phone, who ran through meditation techniques with me. I didn’t like this much, I struggled with meditation and breathing exercises, and talking over the phone wasn’t super comfortable or helpful to me.

However, as summer came, and I became less of a perfectionist, along with the medicine, I started feeling better, and didn’t talk to the counselor anymore.

I went back to college, and stayed on the medication, but now just the sleep meds I took, as I didn’t renew the other ones, as I felt like they’d stopped working. For two years, I was in school, struggling especially in the winter, but functioning all right. I got good grades and hung out with my roommates. I thought I was doing okay.

During my internship that summer, the other intern and I had a lot of time to talk with one another. She told me about her and some of her family’s counseling experiences, and how it helped her. She told me, “I think counseling and therapy is good for everyone, whether they have a diagnosed mental illness or not. Everyone needs help.” I agreed, and I started thinking about counseling.

I came back to school, my last year. The pressures of everything in my life came at me hard. My second-to-last semester, I talked to friends about their experiences with counseling. They all recommended it, and said it was a great help to them. It didn’t fix all their problems, but it helped.

I reached out the the school’s health center to try and get in for the free counseling they offer. I had an intro and an assessment, then got put on a wait list. It didn’t seem like I would be able to get in, so I called around town to see if I could get into any of those. No luck, and I had to go through the semester without counseling, struggling to keep up and to feel okay.

Then, finally, it was the first day of this semester, my last, and I went to the health center and could basically pick the time I wanted for counseling. And it is free. I’ve since gone for about a month and a half. It’s been incredible.

My counselor had me meet with a school doctor and get put on different medication. I’ve already noticed a big difference with it, I think I’ve found one that I like and can finally stick with.

But more than medication, I have a safe space to go each week to talk about my problems, the pressures I feel, the sadness and anxiety that affects me. She never invalidates me, she makes me feel like I can open up. She points out things about myself and my thinking that I didn’t recognize before. She also has tools, handouts, and methods, that teach me how to overcome anxious thoughts, how to step back and calm down, and how to process what’s happening in my mind. These things sometimes seem simple, but they are so helpful, and I wouldn’t have learned about them without counseling.

I only have about six weeks left of the semester, so I won’t have long with her, but I hope to find another counselor when I graduate and move.

I think counseling can be beneficial for anyone. Psychology Today has a list of great reasons to go to therapy, including wanting to love and accept yourself, having an hour to focus on yourself, and time to practice assertiveness or expressing emotions in a healthy way. You don’t need to be actively struggling to benefit from therapy.

Photo from Canva

For young people, the stigma about therapy is lessening, which is great. However, there are still communities that reject it, because it feels like weakness. Or in some cases, peers may encourage it, but family members or parents don’t, which could be hard to work through. I think something that can help overcome this is to just go to counseling. It may not always be that simple, with costs, availability, or travel distances to factor in. But if more people continue to go to and benefit from counseling, then it will become more widely accepted across communities.

Just like the way modern slang creeps into everyday use the more people use it, counseling can creep into public acceptance as more and more people seek help.

If you are in a situation where it may be hard to afford, or travel distances are too great, or even if the wait lists are too long, there are still options. If you think you can, you can be like me and deal with the wait lists, and watch for an opportunity to get off it to finally receive care.

There is also the teletherapy option. I may have not liked my mission phone counseling, but that doesn’t mean plenty of others don’t benefit from telemedicine. Advanced Travel Therapy has a good article about the basics of teletherapy. It’s a rapidly growing industry, so if this sounds like a good option for you, do some research and maybe try to get started.

Most of all, don’t give up. Talk to a doctor about your options. If you can’t access therapy now, that doesn’t mean you’ll never be able to.

Therapy doesn’t automatically fix everything. But it can help, coupled with medication, healthy life habits, and whatever else you can do. Even with the short amount of time I’ve been in it, I’ve felt great improvements, and I have more hope. It’s worth it. If you want help, or just want to live life more fully, get you some therapy.