Edmonton Psychologist | Feeling Stuck? Here’s How to Know if You Need Therapy
Hi there, my name is Dr. Kelly Clark – an Edmonton psychologist, and today I wanted to talk about counseling and when and why somebody should refer or consider, pursuing counseling. So there’s a few things that I wanted to talk about as far as counseling.
The first one that I would recommend for somebody that’s considering counseling is that you may want to consider counseling just, just for greater growth, just to know yourself better. Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” so the more we know about ourselves—why we do what we do—the better we have as far as mental health self-awareness, and I think a better insight into how we do relationships with others. So I would say one of the big reasons why I would encourage people—and so you could be, you know, in very healthy relationships, quite good, but may not have huge insight into some of the behaviors—like, you know, for example, why do I care about getting a deal all the time, or why do I have to save every penny? And again, it’s quite functional—lots of people like saving money—but why do I do that? Or why do I spend too much money? There’s another question when maybe you didn’t have a lot of insight into why you do these kind of things, but it’s a good question. And, and you know, maybe your partner, your friends are noticing patterns of behaviors about you, and you may not have great insight as to where that came from and why I do it.
You Don’t Have to Live with Anger Issues
Other things, of course, when people have, you know, significant anger issues: why do I get so angry when somebody doesn’t show up on time or somebody cuts me off while I’m driving? And now again lots of people do, but say you notice that your anger in situations like that is a 10 out of 10, whereas, you know, maybe typically it should be a five out of a 10. So those kind of things are, I think, good reasons why—just to know yourself more and to understand why I do what I do. How come I always have to be right? You know, this can be annoying for friends, or, you know, and maybe you’re not even aware that you have a strong need to be right. So looking at where does this come from—why, why am I doing these kind of behaviors—can be helpful not only for yourself, for self-growth, for understanding, but for those around you. Knowing ourselves more deeply again helps promote our mental health and enhance our relationship with our s and others. So that’s the first area I wanted to bring up: knowing our s increases our our mental health and our emotional health.
Emotions are Information
The other one, of course, I’m going to lead right into, is emotions. I’m a big advocate of knowing emotions and what’s going on for us because I think emotions information. So the word that I want, or the phrase I want to bring up, is to be fully feeling. And I think—and as I presented before on emotions before—I think at an early age and possibly from family some families are not big encouragers to kind of develop emotional awareness or insight. And, and also I think that’s social. In my own Sons I noticed that we’re a family that of course definitely tries to encourage emotional awareness, emotional intelligence. And I noticed my 8-year-old came home the other day and he said, “Yeah Dad, I fell off the the swing,” or he was climbing up on something, crashed down, and he said, “I didn’t cry,” and I was surprised that he was quite proud of this. And I’m at the same time going, “Well, okay, that’s impressive, but you know it’s okay to cry if you fall off of a swing.” And so I’m noticing we are a family that really encourages that, but for some reason already my boy is learning that, you know, it’s important to kind of hide this feeling. So that I’ve noticed that, you know, in society—can even watching TV sometimes—where a person will be tearing up while they’re watching TV and they go, “Oh I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and I’ll notice this apologizing for emotions. Now again I know that that’s a social thing for some people to do, but again I wanted to just applaud emotions and that for us to become more fully feeling is an insight into us that that many people are not quite aware of. In fact one of the things that I notice during therapy is I’ll often get people who are either highly emotional, extremely emotional, or under-emotional, and for me those are evidence—that’s evidence that something’s stuck. When people are overly emotional or there’s a lack of emotion that usually represent that something’s stuck. So back to fully feeling, developing awareness around emotions: I think we gain a great asset and two knowing ourselves better when we’re connected to emotion and to our feelings.
Counselling Help You Become Emotionally Aware
So another reason I think to come into counseling is to become more rehearsed and aware of our emotions. In fact Daniel Goleman who wrote a book on emotional intelligence so that people that are emotionally aware are they have stronger relationships, they have more success in jobs, tend to have higher incomes and have greater emotional and mental health. So I think being aware of our emotions, uh, is much healthier than for people that are oblivious to them. So I would say this term that I want you to remember is that emotion is information. So if you notice that you are set off by something—somebody bugs you—that reaction is evidence that something’s going on for you. More awareness into where that’s coming from—why that feeling happened—I think provides greater insight into yourself, into your relationships. I’ll often get people to say they have a panic disorder—they panicked—or not panic disorder but they had a panic attack, and I’ll ask them, “Do you know what brought that panic on?” “No idea.” And so they had this really strong emotional reaction but no insight, no connection as to the content of the emotion, what it said off. And so I think another good reason to consider counseling and a benefit is emotional awareness, emotional intelligence and building it.
Therapy Helps with Relationships
Another area that I wanted to talk to you about is problems in relationships. So this is probably a pretty clear one that I get when individuals who’ve been married or, you know, say they’re in a romantic relationship for years and they’re having struggles. And I think that one of the—you—I mean you can’t run away often or you may try to from your partner but they are the ones that are holding the mirror up to you and your behaviors, and it creates some taxing emotions. So if you’re noticing you’re struggling, say in romantic relationships or friendships—it’s hard for you to continue or sustain friendships, even hard for you to keep a job—all of those can be reflections of relationship difficulties and a good reason to take a look at what’s going on as far as my relationships and how come I’m having some difficulties. Another benefit to counseling is getting some insight, some connection to those patterns.
Another thing that I wanted to talk about is having big changes in functionality. So if you noticed previous that you were, say, you were fit, you were sleeping well, you’re you’re emotionally pretty stable, you were, you were maintaining a job, had many friendships, and all of a sudden there’s a big change—you’re all of a sudden not maintaining friendships, now isolating, you lost your job and you have a bunch of sets of those things coming up—any big change in functionality is a good reason to take a look at what’s going on and possibly getting more insight through some counseling.
Feel Your Uncomfortable Moods
Now the area I was going to talk about are prolonged periods of uncomfortable moods. So without getting into the difference between emotions, feelings and moods too much, I did want to quickly say that feelings are very quick momentary things. Like if I, if somebody pinched me on the arm, that’s a feeling registered in my body. Emotion is more connected to more cognition. So if somebody pinched me on my arm I felt it—so that’s a feeling—but I might have had a more cognitive, deeper thought on that going, “Why did that person just pinch me? They’re trying to hurt me?” So the cognitive content around that—now I’m offended—leads to the emotion of anger. So emotion is has more deeper cognitive sets and reflection; feelings are more quick and momentary, whereas moods are more prolonged periods of both of those and they’re more deeply, connected to cognitive frames and sets and and assumptions and values. And so if you have a sustained mood state—so you’ve noticed for a month now or several weeks or longer that you’re feeling quite low or quite anxious—that’s a good reason to go, “Maybe I should consider some counseling.” So in general when, when a psychologist is listening, when I’m listening to an individual and I’m hearing things like they, you know, they’re feeling sad or low or or incredibly anxious, and if there’s higher levels of now of self-d dots self-criticism, there’s more, that the internal critic is much louder, and I’m hearing things around around three, areas of their life: they view themselves as a mess; they view their life as a mess—“there’s nothing good about it”—and lastly their future is a mess. When I hear these things it often contributes to difficulties with mood sadness and then consequently anxiety. So if you’re noticing long prolonged expressions of mood or emotion, that’s another good reason to come in for counseling.
Learn to Respond Instead of React
Reactivity versus responsiveness is another area that I like to help people notice their reactions. So when we have strong reactions to things—say you’re a person as I was mentioning earlier that really doesn’t like when somebody’s like, this really bothers you, I mean it it really triggers something for you, it really sets something off—and in response to that person being late maybe you, you know, blast them, give the—or you avoid affection or connection and stop talking to for weeks. So that reactivity leads to a reaction which often can be unhealthy. Whereas again back to getting some insight with counseling: why was my reaction so strong? And now when you’re able to kind of go through it, get some insight into it, connect to the emotions around it and even to past incidents where that was significant for you, now you’ve got much more awareness was what was going on, and instead of reacting now you can respond. So you can respond going, “Okay I get why that was such a big deal for me, now I can present it differently, now I can respond differently in a healthier way.” So counseling can help understand your reactivity, help you to respond in a more healthy manner.
Contact Clark Psychological For an Appointment
Last thing that I wanted to mention—and these are just a few things; there’s the lot of benefits for counseling outside what I’ve talked about—is for support. You know, in general I want I like to ask people how many people or who gets you in your life, and if you quickly can go, “Oh yeah, I’ve got this person, this person,” or even one—if you have one person that you feel really gets you in your life—that goes a long way from our emotional health and for our mental health. So I wanted to ask you that question question, and if there aren’t many it’s another reason to come see a counselor so you can gain support through counseling—somebody who’s doing counseling, a—and I’ll call it a good enough counselor, because I think we should, you know, in a lot of cases stick with counselors even if we’re not over the moon with them, but they’re they’re meeting the needs and they’re good enough because then you can, form that sense of support and caring and then in so doing that learn what actually contributed to you feeling supported cared for and you can replicate that or share that with others. So support is another thing that is a good reason to come in for counseling.
I’m Dr Kelly Clark, your Edmonton psychologist. Thank you for listening. Have a great day.