What is therapy?
Mental health therapy can be called a lot of things such as counseling, psychotherapy, or talk therapy. Mental health therapy is a profession with a wide array of clinicians, utilizing different approaches to help a person with challenging emotions, thoughts, or behaviors.
In simple terms, therapy is a profession aimed to help other people. Some of the things that therapy can help with are trauma or grief, anxiety or depression, unwanted thoughts/feelings/behaviors, conflict in relationships, self-esteem and self-confidence, accomplishing goals, or processing life experiences.
The most important part of therapy is the therapeutic relationship—the relationship between the client and the therapist.
This relationship is integral in making progress, change, and accomplishing goals in therapy. A good relationship between the client and therapist allows for attunement, mutual understanding, respect, compassion, and trust. In considering neuropsychology, this relationship itself can even be healing due to the concept of “mirror neurons.” Mirror neurons are neurons in our brain that basically allow for an individual to learn just by watching. Mirror neurons in therapy explain how having a therapist that models healthy behaviors can teach the client the same healthy behaviors just by watching and being in the same environment as the therapist, who exhibits security, trust, understanding, etc.
In therapy, you can expect many things just depending on the therapist’s approach, but in summary you can expect to gain insight, learn about yourself, learn about others, grow, figure out how to accomplish goals, and feel “better.”
Many people enter therapy because of a lack of feeling content in life. It can be childhood trauma, anxiety, relationship problems, disordered functioning, hopelessness, or anything unsettling that causes interest in therapy.
Regardless, mental health therapy is a profession specifically for helping people reach the other side of whatever is disrupting their life so that they can live the life they truly desire.
So when I say “feel better,” I really mean feel better. Better can be defined in many ways depending on what an individual is facing or what their needs are, but the goal is to provide a happier and healthier way of living.
So, what is therapy? Therapy is treatment intended to relieve, heal, and resolve problematic problematic behaviors, beliefs, feelings, relationship issues, responses, etc.