Do I Need Therapy?!? 😜

Hey guys, it's me, Natalie Moore, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and today I'm going to tackle the question, do I need therapy? Tough question, but I have a lot to share on this topic. First of all, anyone would benefit from good ethical therapy. Good ethical therapy is essentially talking to a person who you feel safe with and who you trust in a confidential environment, knowing that nothing that you share is going to be disclosed outside of that room, and feeling as though this person cares about you, empathizes with you, and legitimately wants to help you with whatever issue it is that you're coming into therapy for. Really, it's just a healthy and helpful relationship in which you can work out your issues with someone who is unbiased and has some distance from you and is not immediately involved in your life. Anyone would be able to benefit from having 1 hour a week where the sole focus is helping you work through frustrations and fears, helping you become more reflective about yourself, your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and empowering you to make positive change in your life. You really can't go wrong with that. The question posed as, "Do I need therapy?" actually has some stigma associated with it. Imagine if you were talking to a friend and they looked at you and said, "You need therapy." That wouldn't feel very good. It would feel as though the person was saying that there was something wrong with you or that you couldn't deal with your own issues and that you seriously needed some professional help. So I want to rephrase the question towards, "Would I benefit from therapy at this time in my life?" would going to a therapist really help me and take off some of the burden and some of the difficulty and suffering that I'm experiencing in my life right now? Some indicators that your problem has gotten to a point where you might need some professional help is if the issue is starting to get in the way of your ability to study and get your work done in school, your ability to perform at work and attend work regularly, or if it's starting to have an impact on your relationships. If you are depressed or anxious and can't even get out of bed in the morning to go to school or work, or if you find yourself short-tempered with people in your life and driving people away, this— these could all be signs that you could benefit from psychotherapy. Look, nobody wants to feel bad. Everybody wants to feel good, right? That's the point of life. We want to be happy. And so if you feel that whatever your issue is or phase of life is getting in the way of your pure happiness, then I recommend you look into counseling and see if it's something that can help you. Chances are, if you're asking yourself, "Hey, do I need therapy?" the answer is probably yes. Most people who are walking around and completely content and happy with their lives are not really thinking about whether they need psychotherapy. If your issue is getting to the point where you feel like you need professional help, reach out, don't hesitate. There are so many mental health professionals If you live in an area that doesn't have a lot of mental health professionals, there's also the option of online counseling, so you have more options available to you. And really, they would be so happy to hear from you and to see if you would be a good fit for working with them. What I find in my psychotherapy practice is that many clients actually wait until problems have gotten so bad that they feel that they need psychotherapy, and by the time that happens, they might have eroded certain relationships they may have relied on coping mechanisms that weren't very healthy, like addiction or distraction from their issues, and it makes it harder to actually make therapeutic gains. When people start to realize that they have a problem that's getting out of hand that they need help with, the therapist can actually provide support at that time and help people build on their current strengths and their current supports, and they won't need therapy as long, as opposed to working with people who have gotten into a crisis situation, and at that point it's much harder to help people out of their issue. When people call me up and say, "Hey, I don't know if I need therapy, but I'm thinking about it," that makes me so happy and hopeful for this client. It means that they have a certain level of awareness and understand that they don't want to wait until things get really bad to get help. They want to get their life from good to great, not from bad to okay. I also want to add that psychotherapy is not a just for people who have big problems that need help with these problems. Psychotherapy and life coaching and any type of spiritual guidance are amazing tools to help people in their personal growth journey, period. I, yes, I've had periods of my life where I was going through a hard time and needed psychotherapy to support me through those tough times. I also have had periods in my life where things were going really, really well and I wanted to be in psychotherapy or coaching or some type of support supportive relationship where that person could just help me uplevel my life and help me break through limiting beliefs, break through financial glass ceilings, break through things that I didn't know were holding me back. And it's just really great to have somebody else, a fresh pair of eyes who's unbiased and can see you from a different perspective and encourage you in a multitude of ways. If you live in the Los Angeles area and you're considering psychotherapy and you're not sure if you need it or if it's the right fit for you, I encourage you to give me a call. I offer a 15-minute free consultation to anybody who wants it, and I'm always happy to hear from people and see if we would be a good fit for working together. So feel free to reach out. I hope to hear from you soon. Bye-bye.