How Do You Know if Therapy is Right for You?

This post originally appeared as an original blog post at ty-hicks.com. See the full, original post here.

How to address your mental health is an important and intimate matter, and you need to have all of your options well understood and in front of you as you decide what is best for you to pursue.

While most people believe that the best or only options that they have are traditional talk therapy, counseling, or obtaining a clinical diagnosis and a prescription, these routes very often do not produce the results expected or desired for patients seeking a lasting solution to their depression and anxiety.

Therapy is often the first route many people will be encouraged to take because of its long history as a method of recourse. As a society, we have largely defaulted to talk therapy as the go to method for addressing mental health challenges for several decades.

But as we know, not all methods that have persisted have done so because of their superiority and effectiveness. Those considering therapy should be aware of the usual course of action that is applied, the overarching goals of the practitioner, and the limitations this methodology commonly creates.

Two Limiting Factors of Traditional Talk Therapy

The first major factor that limits the effectiveness of therapy and counseling is what I call The Broken Patient Myth. Primarily trained in the somatic or cognitive behavioral school of thought, most therapists and counselors have a deep rooted assumption that depression and anxiety can be marginally improved, but not overcome.

The summarized view is that depression and anxiety are primarily understandable as biochemical or hereditary phenomena and that they are likely to persist in the life of patient to some extent for the rest of their life.

This stands at odds with the goals of the patient when they first seek out treatment, however. When they first encounter depression or anxiety as a systemic mental health challenge in their life, wants it gone, not just managed.

It is usually only through years of prolonged treatment that patients begin to believe that the best they can hope for are small improvements rather than real solutions, and unfortunately the institutionalized methods of most therapists and counselors implicitly reinforce this belief even though the practitioner truly does intend on serving the patient at the deepest level possible.

If you’re going to someone to get a solution to a problem but they don’t truly believe there is a solution available, then what are your chances of having your goal met in that environment?

This is why, in order to determine what method you want to use to address your mental health, you are clear on what your goals are. If merely coping is ok with you and getting through another week with a little less pain would be sufficient, therapy is likely to help you produce those results, at least in the short term.

But if your goal is a full and natural solution, you will likely need to look elsewhere.

The second major impediment that patients often face when pursuing therapy is the non directive nature of most therapists’ approach. 

While each therapist and counselor may have their own unique preferences of tools and techniques, the overarching way in which therapists and counselors primarily conduct therapy is through a non directive approach.

The goal in this approach is to hold a space for the client to speak their mind and eventually arrive at new conclusions about their problem primarily on their own. The therapist will ask questions and reflect back to the patient, but most therapists’ goal is not to nudge the client in any one direction.

While this approach can be helpful, it usually takes an incredibly long period of time for the results to take place, if at all.

Thus, most clients who go through therapy will feel in the first 1-2 months that progress is being made largely because they finally have someone they feel they can open up to and that they have a place they can use as a way to vent. 

That feeling of temporary release is confused for actually making systemic progress towards the conditioned patterns of depression and anxiety that brought the patient to the therapist.

In month 3 and onward, many clients of therapy report feeling a plateau or even an experience like their situation is worsening. How could this be?

A worsening of the conditions can occur especially in situations when the source of a client’s depression or anxiety has been wrongfully diagnosed as the byproduct of a former trauma or abuse. 

While acknowledging and helping a client process such significant life events is necessary for effective change to take place, prolonged examination and refocusing on past injustices serves to cause clients to often feel worse when they leave a therapy session then when they began and to reconstruct their sense of identity around a disempowering experience.

The sad reality is that clients who are seeking a full and natural solution are very unlikely to find it by pursuing traditional therapy or counseling.

After several months, years, or even decades of continued therapy for challenges that could otherwise be handled within a few weeks through other methods, the patient will very often wrongfully assume that how they feel now is likely to be how they will always feel in the future.

How do you know if therapy is right for you?

Get clear on what your goal is. Do you believe that your situation will likely never be overcome and you just need a safe place to talk, be heard, and feel listened to? Then therapy may be right for you.

But do you want to create a true, full, and natural solution to your depression and anxiety? To eliminate, not just cope? Then you’ve got to pursue a proven route that others have to create those results.