Therapy can be great if you have a therapist who is right for you. Are you wondering whether to try individual therapy? Here are some reasons to consider it:
- You feel stuck in some way and can’t seem to get unstuck no matter how hard you try. A good therapist can help you figure out why you feel stuck and how to move in the direction you want.
- You have trouble with relationships. Maybe your relationships don’t go well for you or maybe you aren’t able to form relationships at all. The most helpful thing about psychotherapy is that it is a relationship, one that can both teach you about healthy relationships and give you support.
- Your emotions don’t make sense to you. Maybe you suspect you are overreacting emotionally and having big feelings about small things. Maybe you are underreacting and not in touch with your feelings much at all. Or maybe you are numbing yourself so you don’t have to deal with those pesky feelings. A therapist can help you to explore your feelings at your own pace and teach you how to do it on your own.
- You suspect events from your past are negatively affecting your present. Traumatic events can affect us over our lifetimes in different ways. Therapy can help you learn how to cope with your reactions to your trauma history, explore your feelings and memories in a safe way, and figure out how to move on with your life.
- You worry you are overburdening your family or friends with your problems. It can help to have time set aside for yourself every week to talk about your problems in therapy. It can take the pressure off of others in your life and offer a space for healing and growth.
- Your anxiety or depression are making your life smaller and smaller. You find yourself pulling back from others, feeling alone with your feelings, and trying to avoid situations that might trigger your feelings. Therapy can help you to change your outlook to a more expansive, connected one.
- You question how to live with authenticity. It can be challenging to figure out who you are, how you got to be that way, and whether you’d like to change. A therapist can help you think it through.
- Your coping strategies aren’t working well for you any more. Even though you learned to cope in particular ways for good reasons, sometimes those coping strategies expire and don’t work any more. Therapy can help you develop new ways to cope.
- You feel like your life is out of balance. Maybe you can’t seem to balance all of your responsibilities in the way you’d like, maybe you have too much stress in your life, maybe you constantly feel like you can’t find any ground to stand on. Therapy can help you to create a more balanced life for yourself and to learn to ground yourself when you are under a lot of stress.
- You are open to learning something new. If you are willing to challenge your thinking and learn new ways to make your life meaningful, therapy can help you with that.