Anxiety and depression can kill. These are major factors that subsequently result in self-harm and suicide once neglected, hence, the need for professional help and counselling therapies. Apart from this, stigmatising the idea of seeking professional help to treat mental health issues, should be put to a stop. Seeking professional assistance should also be normalised in society as mental health is as significant as any person’s physical health and should be given equal attention.
Similarly, mental health isn’t just responsible for the well-being of a person as this poses a substantial impact on one’s daily life. When dealing with a mental health issue, you can seek the help of registered counsellors and various mental healthcare providers like HCBH.org, or any other similar organizations that offer various counselling programs to help build healthy relationships, improve well-being, and strengthen bonds with your loved ones.
Also, seeing a counsellor may significantly help you learn a thing or two about establishing and nurturing personal relationships, managing stress properly to achieve peace of mind, and acquiring different perspectives in life.
To help you fully understand the benefits of counselling, it’s better to know first what it’s all about, how it’s connected to psychotherapy, and how counselling can improve one’s life.
Counselling as a Weapon Against Mental Health Issues
Everyone gets through difficult situations in life, no matter how hard they try to evade them. For relief, most people cope by seeking comfort from loved ones, listening to music, and engaging in counselling. In particular, counselling allows them to have someone to talk to without worrying about being judged and ridiculed. With the presence of skilled therapists who incorporate active listening and provide unconditional attention to their clients, there’s a higher chance of recovery after a series of sessions.
Counselling, as a form of psychotherapy, is a process of working through your problems with a counsellor. This also takes into the form of psychodynamics in a way that counselling tackles not just symptoms of specific behaviour, but also delves deeper to find its root cause. Three fundamental values of counselling include empathy, impartiality, and unconditional positive communication with the client.
Therapists consider counselling as the most effective weapon a person can wield against a wide range of mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, and behavioural disorders. This is a kind of psychotherapy that aims to help people recognize and resolve conflicts before things get out of hand. Licensed counsellors utilise several approaches to help people from different walks of life resolve psychological issues which are commonly ignored and neglected in society.
Most people, especially younger generations, tend to bottle up unpleasant emotions and disregard mental health issues. Subsequently, engaging in counselling helps people to build healthier relationships with their loved ones and resolve common mental health issues. Seeing a counsellor helps clients make sound decisions, properly deal with mental health issues, effectively cater to their psychological needs, and decide sensibly in the future.
Counselling sessions varies depending on the person’s mental health and the severity of their condition. It’s also better for struggling people to know how beneficial counselling is in handling mental health issues and keeping their mental health in good condition.
Counselling Changes Your Life
Counselling is an essential tool for dealing with a wide range of mental health issues that can also affect one’s life. Aside from helping people to effectively deal with their psychological needs and utilising some strategies to effectively handle stress, seeing a counsellor lets people find someone to talk to. It’s beneficial for people who are currently dealing with emotional and psychological conflicts, as they’ll be given enough time to evaluate their decisions and look into new perspectives in life.
What’s good about counselling therapy is that it doesn’t only identify overt symptoms of certain behaviour, but also determines possible causes to efficiently resolve it. Also, seeking a counsellor who is experienced enough in handling issues that are commonly difficult to deal with relieves possible doubts and uncertainties on the client’s part.
8 Advantages of Seeing a Counsellor
Counselling and therapy offer a wide variety of positive advantages to a person. Apart from determining the possible causes and symptoms of specific behaviours, seeing a counsellor also helps people to effectively deal with anxiety, depression, individual psychological issues, parent-children conflict, and toxic relationships.
For better understanding, below are eight benefits of seeing a counsellor.
- Relieves Unpleasant Emotions
Telling your deepest and darkest secrets to a person isn’t an easy task to do especially to someone who’s a complete stranger. Most people, especially younger ones, tend to deal with their pain alone and hide emotions they find unsettling even to their own family. Consequently, repressing one’s emotions purposely can accumulate into severe mental health issues.
Seeking professional help provided by competent counsellors allows you to move on from traumatic experiences which significantly affect your behaviour and perception in life. Confiding your experiences with a professional and impartial counsellor is similar to writing to a diary, only that the former can actually give you concrete solutions to your problems. Besides, letting your bottled emotions out can be a fulfilling and relieving experience.
Making other people know your pain and sufferings allows you to share some of the burdens that are keeping you from living the life you deserve.
- Develops Openness & Acceptance
You’re not defined by your past and wrong decisions. Your failures, misdoings, and insecurities don’t define who you are as a person. Counsellors let their clients ponder upon this reality to help them know that they don’t have control over everything in life. Even the strongest people fall at some point in their lives and commit mistakes. Speaking with a counsellor may help you realise that despite encountering failures and downturns, what matters is that you learn how to stand up from the fall.
Counselling helps people accept who they are as a person, including strengths and flaws. This develops emotional openness towards other people. Expressing your emotions to the people who care for you should be natural, whether they be negative or positive emotions. Letting your loved ones see your strengths and vulnerabilities develops trust and honesty.
There’s beauty in being true to yourself. Counsellors help people realise the necessity of accepting themselves and making other people see the real them beneath layers of protective walls. Therapists also provide several alternatives which the client can choose from to further assist recovery. This way, they can properly express their emotions and thoughts and be likewise receptive to other’s emotions. Full emotional openness allows people to recognize their own psychological needs and cater to them better.
- Paves Way for New Perspectives
Narrating your emotions and experiences makes you see them in a different light. Similarly, working through your problems with the help of your counsellor allows you to see the world with fresh eyes and face problems you find difficult to deal with. Dealing with mental health issues is never easy. It requires a lot of time and effort from both the client and counsellor, which is why only a few people choose this remedy.
However, it’s imperative to know that seeking other’s opinions, especially your counsellor’s insights about matters you find crucial in your life can also help. How you view things might be entirely different from how they should be perceived.
Also, realising one’s psychological needs is essential in the process of recovery. You can’t resolve things that you refuse to recognise and your counsellor can help you do exactly that.
- Provides Comfort & Security
You might be having a hard time opening yourself up to someone, even to your own family, regarding issues of mental health. While this may be understandable due to your doubt, prolonging your suffering by keeping everything to yourself might worsen the situation. To prevent issues from increasing, it’s better to try seeking professional help.
Engaging in counselling and speaking with a licensed therapist might help you find the comfort and security you’ve been looking for. Counsellor’s are well-versed in observing impartiality and fairness when talking to a client. Whatever you tell them will remain between the two of you and your counsellor will be held accountable for any indiscretion that might occur.
Moreover, seeing a counsellor provides a sense of security and comfort to the client to lower down their guards and gradually lessen inhibitions and self-reservations during sessions.
- Emphasises Independence & Individuality
In some instances, traumatic experiences and other influencing factors result in losing one’s identity and self-worth. Dealing with a mental health issue doesn’t mean that you’ll lose who you are as a person. You are who you chose to be, and being in a dragging situation that you have less control of shouldn’t affect your personality.
Thus, engaging in therapy makes people recognise and understand individual identity and assert independence before a traumatic experience. It aims to help develop healthy well-being and stable mental health through the promotion of individuality and independence.
Also, seeing a counsellor helps people identify and accept differences brought about by various factors which could be the main cause of a dispute or conflict. This helps clients embrace conflicting values and distinctions in building personal relationships with other people. Besides, a well-established community isn’t built just by finding common grounds among its people. It’s also about accepting individual identities and living with them.
Embracing one’s individuality despite conflicting values is crucial in establishing a healthy and sustaining community. Also, counsellors help identify factors that primarily affect a person’s behaviour, such as physical and emotional needs, values, ideals, and beliefs. These factors are essential in determining individual identity.
- Stimulates a Positive Disposition
One of the benefits of engaging in therapy is that it helps people acquire something to look forward to, something that can keep them going and striving. Most people, even the strongest ones, lose their hope at some point in their lives and think of giving up. Counselling proves to be beneficial for clients in a sense that it makes them discern their decision thoroughly and help them realise that life is still beautiful even after an unpleasant experience.
Also, seeking a counsellor’s service to treat mental health issues gives clients the chance to re-evaluate their way of thinking, help them in decision-making, and stimulate a positive disposition to help them with their recovery.
Saying that it’s all just in someone’s head isn’t appropriate as one can’t fathom what the other person is going through. This is why in counselling, therapists help their clients realise how a positive disposition can substantially create a change in someone’s way of thinking and perception of things. Seeing your trusted counsellors allows you to lessen the loads you’ve been carrying for a long time and finally let a ray of sunshine penetrate your dark clouds. After all, there’s indeed light at the end of the dark tunnel.
- Resolves Internal Conflicts
Engaging in counselling resolves little misunderstandings and disagreements which can accumulate and turn into major problems. Similarly, engaging in therapy is essential in resolving potential conflicts before they happen. Seeing a counsellor helps people to effectively address problems even before they substantially affect them.
- Nurtures Mental Wellness
Seeking professional help and engaging in counselling help in establishing healthier relationships with loved ones and offers strategies to properly manage stress. This is essential for achieving happiness and stable well-being. Apart from this, seeing a counsellor is essential in dealing with mental health issues and effectively catering to one’s psychological needs. Being in a traumatic situation can be mentally and emotionally straining, which might also lead to serious physical and mental issues.
Hence, counselling teaches you to be mindful of your emotional and psychological needs.
Bottom Line
Caring for your mental health and seeking professional help is essential in resolving internal conflicts which can significantly affect one’s self. Therapy is for everyone, whether you’re troubled, stressed, or feeling inadequate – seeing a counsellor is always helpful.
The lack of attention to your psychological needs can accumulate into severe mental problems. Hence, seeing a counsellor helps in recognising your dealings and experiences and learning useful remedies you can use to cope with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. Don’t hesitate to seek professional help when dealing with mental health issues. Moreover, normalise maintaining your mental health in a good condition to effectively achieve the productive and happy life you deserve.
By Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association
https://anzmh.asn.au/blog/8-benefits-of-seeing-a-counsellor