Why counselling might be good for you
There are many benefits to sitting with a trained and experienced counsellor. The decision to take the plunge and book in a session can be quite daunting and it can take a fair amount of courage to get to this point. Allow me to take out some of the stigma people can feel in seeking mental health services while also encourage you to take the big step towards a more positive experience and book in that counselling session.
Co-regulation
Research shows that we can experience healing of attachment wounds when we can connect with a safe person and begin to trust them. When we learn that we are worthy, and others can be trusted to meet our emotional and psychological needs we can rewrite our attachment abilities and become more secure with our connection to self and others. When we trust someone, we can feel safe and connected. This feeling allows us to feel emotionally soothed and regulated if we become distressed and deregulated. Being able to feel calmed and grounded with the help of someone else's calm and peaceful presence is called co-regulation. Our nervous system can turn off the fight/flight/freeze response and come to a safer and more connected state. Your counsellor can help you regulate as you build connection and trust them with your most protected parts of your inner self.
Psychoeducation
Psychoeducation is the word used to describe the teaching of psychological evidence-based therapeutic interventions to help people be able to: know better so they can do better. Likewise, when you know more you can hold more compassion for yourself. These abilities are important outcomes of effective therapy.
You don't know what you don't know.
You also are able to find out what you don't know. This is often very hard to work out and having an unbiased compassionate outsider perspective can be very helpful to draw upon.
More than venting with friends and family
Counsellors differ from our wise close friends and family. Counsellors won't just agree with your point of view and enable a toxic thinking pattern or unhelpful thinking habits. Counsellors will challenge you sometimes and help you find new thoughts and alternative viewpoints to assist you with your long-term counselling goals. Plus, most counsellors are specifically trained to know your brain and nervous system well and will help you get to know your brain and nervous system too.
Find new tools and strategies
Knowing these things mentioned above, positions yourself to become your own defender and protector and to recognise when you need to step into this role to soothe and help yourself. You learn how to recognise the unhealthy habits, coping strategies and reactions and build new strategies and skills into your life to help yourself.
Self-care
We all live busy lives and finding time to focus on our own needs, our own thoughts and feelings are often the last thing on our priority list. Having a regular ongoing place in your week or fortnight with your counsellor can become a very loving self-care act. Creating time in your life to process the hard things you know you need to process. Plus, you can also regularly practice and refresh your memory on the tools to soothe and ground yourself so that you can do life stronger, wiser, and more authentically.
I could probably speak on this topic for hours. The personal therapy work I have done with my own counsellor has improved all my relationships in my life, including the connections I make as a counsellor. It is so very worthwhile and is an ongoing steady personal work that I think everybody will benefit from.
It is worth the hours of reading counsellor profiles and meeting in person/online/phone with the counsellors who you feel might be a good match for you and the season you are in. Testing them out, to see if they are a good fit for you. It can take a few tries to get it right but once you do, you will know for yourself how wonderful it is! A well-matched counsellor is worth more than all the riches of this earth.