If you’ve been feeling a certain way and have been thinking about going to therapy, but are unsure or you know someone who is going to therapy, but their life doesn’t seem that bad and it’s leaving you confused, this post is for you.
We’re myth busting today. The myth: things have to be really bad to go to therapy.
Whether you’re thinking things aren’t the best in my relationship, but it’s not horrible, we’re not at the point we need therapy or I’ve just been feeling down, I’ll be fine or even why is my kid in therapy, they had a great childhood, we’re here to talk about why therapy isn’t just for the “worst” of us or “the most traumatized,” but for all of us. Of course, there are times in our lives we may not be in therapy and we are maintaining mental health well, but there will also be times in which we feel like we can’t catch up and feel a little blue. I’m not here to tell you to be in therapy weekly for the rest of your life (unless you want to), but I am here to destigmatize the utilization of therapy.
I’m not going to go into all of the historical reasons why mental health treatment has been stigmatized throughout time, but I do want to acknowledge that they are there. At one point, mental health treatment was extreme and only for severe cases, although there’s significantly more nuance to that. I want to ask you, reader, why is mental health treatment so stigmatized for you? Is it about what others will think? Is it about coming to terms with your own need for help? I encourage you to deep dive into why these things are impacting you, which are things we could even talk about in therapy.
Let’s use going to the mechanic to illustrate the damage that could be done by stigmatizing therapy. If you need an oil change, but you don’t take it to the mechanic (or change it yourself if you’re that kind of person), then you could potentially end up with big issues, like needing a new engine. Now insert stigma into that scenario: In this society, we have decided that needing a mechanic is taboo and we are expected to do everything for our car ourselves, except for in crisis like car accidents. I’ve been needing an oil change, but I don’t want to take it to the mechanic even though I haven’t been able to do it myself like I normally have been, but if I take it to the mechanic then people will think I don’t have a handle on my own car, so I guess I just won’t take it. Then after a while, my car stops working and I don’t understand why. I have to call a tow truck to take it to a mechanic and there they tell me I need a new engine and that other parts of the car have started to get damaged too.
This is what stigma does. Stigma takes something that would otherwise be socially acceptable and twists it to something to be feared. Side bar for a moment, if you have trauma or distrust associated with mental health or health professionals, you are not experiencing the effects of stigma, you are experiencing the effects of trauma and possibly systemic oppression. Back to regularly scheduled programming, do you understand now how stigma can be damaging to yourself and others? Could you imagine if your brakes go out and we as a society have determined that we have to do it ourselves, maybe then we would all know how to do it, but then why are we not given tools to help our own mental health? Or why have we decided that mechanics are not stigmatized? They’re professionals and we are able to know when our skills are not sufficient enough to fix our own transmission and able to relinquish control to our mechanic to help fix it. So why are we unable to know our limits and relinquish control to our therapist to guide us?
I know a therapist is harder to relinquish control to than a mechanic since the things you are relinquishing are much closer to your heart than your car (if that’s not true, forgive me for that assumption).
Do your tires need to be falling off your car for you to take it to the mechanic? Do you have to wait until your engine fails to go to the mechanic? Probably not.
It’s time to start treating therapy the same way you treat a mechanic. Go when you start feeling off, like things aren’t quite right, but things aren’t falling apart. Go when you and your partner are having frustrations, but you’re not ready to part ways. And don’t wait for it to feel off for years before you contact a therapist! Understand that, just like you, your adult child has experienced hurt in their lives.
Therapy, especially and specifically outpatient therapy, is neither extreme nor only for severe cases. Therapy can be for you. Therapy is talking to a third party, someone who doesn’t have a stake in the game, someone who has been trained to ask you questions to think deeper about your experiences and help you connect dots, someone who celebrates your victories when others in your life may not, and so much more.
Ashley Heinrich is a Licensed Professional Counselor at Greenway Therapy . Learn more about her on her BIO page.