5 Benefits of Counseling for Everyone

We all have strategies and coping mechanisms for handling life’s challenges.  Sometimes our methods are on the healthy side like exercise or journaling.  But sometimes, those strategies we regularly use simply don’t work effectively.  Examples of this would be having an angry outburst to manage frustration or playing negative events over and over in the mind.  The support of counseling can provide a boost to positive strategies and a reworking of the negative ones.

But the reasons to not seek counseling help are endless.  Here’s what some of them might sound like:

Only crazy people go to counseling.  I don’t want anyone to know how bad my life really is.  This situation is hopeless; there is nothing I can do.  I can manage without anyone’s help.  My symptoms aren’t that bad.  This is just the way I am.  Why bother, nothing will change anyway. How can talking to someone help anything?  I don’t want anyone to know I can’t handle my problems!  I’m managing well enough.  I’ve read all the self-help books already.

Or maybe the truth is….  the process of counseling seems scary.  Realizing that change requires addressing what isn’t working and moving through emotional pain can feel impossible and terrifying.

In counseling we find, time and time again, the power of connection with another to be the way change finally begins to take root and blossom.  Human beings are social creatures and when we find therapeutic connection with another, we begin to find solutions to what previously seemed impossible.  Counseling is a different experience from talking with a friend or loved one. Counseling involves a trained professional who challenges what isn’t working to make room for what will. Whatever the reason, there are some real benefits people often report after having counseling.

You move through and find perspective for negative emotions
Therapy provides a safe place to work through negative responses to both the large, life-altering events as well as the chronic, small repetitive events.  Learning how to gain a new perspective or to alter a typical response can be liberating.  Imagine being able to participate in your most dreaded life requirements minus the negative feelings.  Shifting your own perspectives changes you and then the details of life don’t have to change.

You find a solution to a problem
How often do we think we need to decide between A and B, but we don’t really want either option?  Counseling can help to dissect a problem and find possible solutions that you haven’t been able to see.  Being able to see the situation from a broader perspective can often make moving forward much easier.

You find a increase in general life satisfaction
As you begin to change self-defeating patterns or optimizing positive ones, the natural bi-product is an overall increase in happiness and life satisfaction.  Relationships become more satisfying and being comfortable in the world and inside your own head becomes a daily reality.

Improved overall wellness
Research continues to support improved physical health when mental health improves. Depression, anxiety, chronic stress and trauma are well documented as causes of high blood pressure, gastrointestinal distress, fibromyalgia, headaches, insomnia, muscle pain and more. When we uncover and release emotional pain, we allow the body to relax and repair.

Psychotherapy increases life success
Counseling actually rewires the brain.  Brain mapping studies demonstrate that after counseling multiple areas of the brain are firing in different, and more effective, ways.  This remapping helps to prepare you for future curve balls life might throw as well as to be able to optimize your every day.
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What are you waiting for?

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