Thankfully, we are becoming more and more aware of our mental health, with growing media interest, celebrities being Increasingly open about the pain and turmoil of their suffering, and the young Royals doing their best to eliminate the negative stigma which has surrounded mental health for years. I am sure that this has had an impact on those seeking help for their problems. In the past decade people seeking help has risen from around 20% to 40%. Good news, however this means that around 60% are still suffering in silence.
Negative stigma
Even though we are doing our best to change this, the negative stigma around mental health is still out there. Even when trying to help loved ones, statements like “you have nothing to be anxious/depressed about” can only make things worse, because we have no idea what’s going on on inside other peoples heads. It still takes enormous courage to ask for help.
Who can help
If you do you make the decision to seek help, the next question is who do you go to? The first port of call for many is your GP. Doctors have access to a host of medications tailor-made to different types of mental disorders. Those in the medical profession do a marvellous job when helping their patients who are suffering with mental disorders. They save lives, drugs can change moods which in turn can prevent us from harming ourselves, a schizophrenic who does not take his or her medication can cause severe harm to others.
I am a Psychotherapist, and my job is to help people retrain their brains so that they can live happier and more focused lives. The Psychotherapist is there to help the client to achieve their own goals using all the therapeutic tools at their disposal. The process of making the actual change is up to the client, anything else would be disempowering, and impossible.
The power of the brain
Our Brain is a magnificent organ, it controls everything we do, some of which we are aware and most of which we are unaware. We use the words subconscious and unconscious every day, The meaning of these words are, everything of which we are not consciously aware. It is the unconscious mind which I find most fascinating performing things we don’t have to ask it to do such as controlling our breathing, or enabling women to grow babies inside them, or sending white blood cells to parts of our bodies that are injured to protect us from infection. From a very early age, we learn ways to keep us out of harms way, we know that putting our hands in the fire, or jumping off the roof of the house is likely to end in tears. We avoid doing these things automatically without thinking. Most of these behaviours are essential for our wellbeing. Some patterns of behaviour however, are outdated and no longer serve any positive purpose. Perhaps we learned that it is dangerous to let people get close, or maybe we got attention from “playing the fool”, or maybe we learned that anxiety keeps us safe. We continue to play out these behaviours even though at a conscious level we might know that it no longer helps us.The good news is that all unconscious behaviour is created with positive intent, (we do what is best for us) and we use the resources that we had available at the time to create these behaviours. As grown ups we have very different resources than we did as children. The best news is, we are all capable of change. We can do this on our own, but sometimes we need help.
Different Psychotherapists use different techniques, but it is the ultimate goal of all Psychotherapists to enable their clients to make positive changes which they perform unconsciously.
Contact me
As I say, asking for help takes courage, if you’re ready to take that step, call me on: (07789) 181244 or email: info@thephobiasurgery.com