In the last few years, demand for mental health services has been on the rise in Canada.
In 2021 alone, studies from Statistics Canada showed that about 1 in 5 Canadians reported needing some sort of help for their mental health.
Even though so many individuals are seeking help for their mental health, therapy remains a taboo topic for many.
There’s a stigma that therapy should only be used by those who have mental health issues or have reached a crisis point.
Bee Kind Counselling has seen this outdated view thrown around often.
This blog seeks to break down the stigma surrounding mental health issues and discuss how therapy can benefit every single one of us.
Why is Therapy Beneficial for Everyone?
Besides helping with mental health issues, therapy could be used for self-discovery or for becoming a better version of yourself.
During this process, better results occur when one is in a state of calm rather than a state of crisis.
If you are struggling with something minor, it would also be better to deal with it now than to allow it to blossom into a crisis mode.
For this reason, mental health professionals at Bee Kind Counselling recommend that anyone seek therapy if they feel they could benefit from it.
Benefits of Therapy
One study on therapy showed that about 50% of patients who went through therapy had an improvement in symptoms within the first 8 weeks, and 75% of patients had improved symptoms within 6 months.
There are many different therapy modalities, and each of them could have its benefits. Today, the overall benefits of therapy in the general sense will be discussed.
Therapy could take place in a virtual format or person. Bee Kind Counselling mental health professionals provide virtual counselling.
Read on to discover all the benefits of therapy that you could take in during your therapy sessions.
1. Treat Mental Health Conditions and Improve Symptoms
Perhaps not surprisingly, therapy can be used to treat various mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and dissociative identity disorder.
Many people seek therapy due to mental health conditions that are causing symptoms that are disrupting their lives.
Whether you take part in individual therapy, family therapy, or couples therapy, therapy could help to reduce a variety of your mental health symptoms.
It could help to:
Reduce anxiety and stress.
Improve your sleep.
Improve your mood.
Bring you more balance.
Reduce irritability and feelings of anger.
2. Improved Relationships
Therapy helps you learn new communication techniques and improve upon the ones you already know.
This could help you learn how to effectively handle difficult situations that arise between yourself and others without running away or jumping to aggressive behavior.
Dialectical behavioral therapy is one form of therapy that teaches communication styles using specific acronyms like DEARMAN and GIVEFAST.
Through individual therapy, you could learn how to:
Set boundaries
Reduce people-pleasing tendencies.
Become more assertive and less passive-aggressive.
This can help improve your relationships with friends, family, coworkers, and others.
You could also go through family or couples counselling to help you all learn as a dynamic how your actions and patterns are interacting in your relationships together and how you could work together to minimize conflicts.
3. Increased Empowerment
One of the goals of therapy is to help clients feel empowered.
You will be viewed as the expert on your healing and empowered to work with your mental health professional to achieve the goals you want to achieve.
You will learn how to assert yourself, how to ask for help, and how to get your needs met when you do ask for help. We want you to leave therapy feeling more confident.
4. Self-Discovery
In therapy, you will learn more about yourself.
You will discover your strengths, your weaknesses, and everything in between.
Maybe you will explore and discover your sexual orientation or gender identity further through LGBTQ+ affirming therapy.
You may also want to explore and discover what career may be best suited for you or what ADHD accommodations will work best for you in the workplace or at school.
Whatever it is you want to learn about yourself, therapy is here to help you discover it.
5. Develop Coping Strategies to Manage Distress
Various therapy modalities teach different techniques for managing stress.
Dialectical behavioral therapy typically focuses on both acceptance and change. In DBT, you accept that your experiences are valid and also recognize that positive changes are needed to manage emotions.
There are several acronyms used for managing stress during states of emotional dysregulation.
These include TIPP, which can be broken down into:
Temperature: change your temperature by adding something hot or cold. This could include an ice pack or a heating pad.
Intense Exercise: Exercise for about 10 minutes to increase your heart rate, release calming neurotransmitters, and bring yourself to a state of calm.
Paced Breathing: Breathe in and out for 3 seconds each until you feel calm.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Tighten and relax each muscle group until you feel calm.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy involves changing your thoughts to bring yourself to a state of calm.
Regardless of what therapy modality is used, therapy helps you develop a whole host of coping strategies that will help you cope in times of distress.
You may learn new techniques, or you may strengthen techniques you already know.
One goal of therapy is to find what coping strategies work for you so you can self-soothe during times of distress.
Your initial therapy consultation will go over what modalities and methods may be used to fit your goals in the future.
6. Learn about Intergenerational Patterns
Oftentimes, people may come into therapy seeking to unlearn unhealthy coping patterns or mechanisms.
Therapy will help you discover how these unhealthy coping patterns may be the result of international trauma.
It will teach you how to be a cycle breaker and how to use coping mechanisms that are less self-destructive.
Book a Free Consultation with Bee Kind Counselling
If you want to start your journey in therapy and you feel like Bee Kind Counselling may be a potential fit for you, you can book a free 15-minute consultation by emailing admin@beekindcounselling.com, calling 519-757-7842 ext. 1 or booking the website below.