Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with a group of people and we were talking about therapy and how expensive it could be. Interestingly, some expressed reservations about the effectiveness of therapy saying they don’t think it’s worth the investment of time and resources if I’m to be honest, I don’t blame them.
I have realized that people have talked so much about therapy as something you should engage when in crisis (now I know that therapy isn’t just about mental health as there exists physical therapy as well but I’ll be limiting the scope of my writing to mental health therapy) whereas that shouldn’t be the case. I do agree that the real definition of therapy is to heal or change the ailing situation of a person but in the real practical sense, If you wait till you are failing or falling before learning how not to fall or fail, I’m afraid you’d be hitting the sacks before realizing it. My point? Therapy can be done anytime and at any point in your life without waiting for a crisis period.
It is important to say here that the best type of therapy (this is a personal view) that I think everyone should engage in irrespective of the state of their mind is PSYCHOTHERAPY. It is basically otherwise known as Talk Therapy. I say this is good because all you have to do is talk while someone listens. It’s a good technique when you want to rant. Isn’t that a good thing? Someone just listens to you rant on about things that annoy or get you angry, rant about anxiety and pains or hurts(of past, present and future).
Without trying to make it elaborate, this technique isn’t just good when there’s no crisis taking you down yet but also helpful when you’re stuck with another person in the driver's seat of your life.
Talking about the driver's seat, do you know that each time you allow anxiety, fear, anger have the better part of us is like giving them the driver's seat of your life? Yeah! now you know.
Let me wrap up by saying your therapist is neither a magician nor a god hence you should be part of the entire journey during therapy so much that you can share with people you choose to share how you got transformed with.
In Nigeria(that’s where I write from at least for now), what you hear people say when you ask how they came out a mental ‘turbulence’ is along the lines of God did it(P.S. I am not against your belief but except it was a white robe appearing before you and touching you, tell us what happened) making it seem like it just happened. The beauty around sharing the story of your recovery goes a long way to encourage people living with mental health conditions that it is not a death sentence.
Thank you for reading.