Your Mom PSA | 5 Reasons to Seek Therapy
Let's break the stigma of seeking help
If you feel that depression counseling won’t be helpful, or that reaching out for help means you’re a failure due to cultural or societal pressures and stigmas, it can be hard to understand how consulting with a professional counselor can make your life better.
Let’s talk about five reasons you should see a counselor for your depression:
OBJECTIVITY
Friends and family love and support you through your depression, but their ability to handle what you’re going through or understand that you can’t just ‘snap out of it’, limits them.
Enter a counselor. Their sole goal is helping you find your way out of the depression. So their office becomes a safe place where you walk through the issue without worrying about hurting anyone’s feelings or explaining why their platitudes aren’t helpful.
YOU TIME
Like most people, you are going through your day obligated to the demands of other people. Whether it’s your kids, partner, or job, it’s really easy to stuff down those feelings of depression. After all, you have things to do, and they’re not going to get done without you, right?
With a counselor, that hour is all about you. While they may ask about the other people in your life, they want to know about you: how you feel today, what good and bad things happened since your last session, and more.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Even with the best intentions, being depressed can turn to thoughts of failure, craziness and even suicide. When you can’t get out of your head, you end up feeling like there must be something seriously wrong with you.
A counselor validates those feelings and lets you know that what you’re going through is normal for someone with your disease (because depression is a disease!). You’re not crazy or a failure, and suicide doesn’t have to be an option.
LEARNING
When your struggle is being negatively reinforced by your environment and the people in it, you can feel like there’s no way out.
A counselor teaches you how to unravel the triggers causing your episodes and suggest different methods to avoid or cope with them. Talking to a counselor helps you learn how to help yourself, which gives you back some of the power that depression takes away. (Learn about 14 of the Most Dangerous Misconceptions about Depression.)
TREATMENT
You may be wary of therapy because of medication or trust issues with new people. You worry that you’ll be a zombie, stuck on pills for the rest of your life, or divulging secrets to someone who doesn’t care about you.
A good counselor will work with you to find the best course of treatment, whether that’s just medication, talk therapy or both. They’ll look at your history, listen to your concerns, and together you can find a way forward, so you can live a normal life again.
Ready to Try?
I’m so proud of you! Need help making that call?