While not everyone needs therapy for their problems in life, I believe that everyone at some point in their life could benefit from some form of mental health support. As a matter of fact, as you get on in years, your social support system tends to be more and more significant, and by the time you are really getting up in years, research shows that having positive social relationships may just be the difference between many more years of living and a premature demise. It is one of the eight factors shown to increase longevity.
The point is, that everybody needs social support at some point in their lives. If you are fortunate enough to get by with the occasional social support from loved ones or with peer support from people who understand what you’re going through, amen to that. Certainly, empathy and compassion are qualities that can be found in many people and the supportive care of a family member or friend can be invaluable. There are, however, certain benefits you can derive from seeking a mental health professional that are not typically available to the average person. There are occasions when the professional training and personalized treatment a mental health professional offers is essential.
For example, you have a child, age 5 or six who is kind of cranky and difficult to get to sleep at night. They fall asleep, and then suddenly wake up, yelling and screaming, eyes open, and seemingly unresponsive to your attempts to calm them down. Many people will perceive that as a form of defiance and choose to respond to their child with strong discipline. Lets say that you are talking to your sister-in-law about the problem, who agrees and supports your decision to discipline the child more stringently. What may be overlooked is whether the child might be experiencing night terrors, a fairly common condition with children who experience intense episodes of fear or terror during sleep, often accompanied by screaming or flailing. They can have episodes of this behavior that occur during NREM sleep and can last up to 40 minutes. The behavior looks out of control and defiant, since they are unresponsive to your requests to them to calm down.
The “common sense” approach advocated by your well-intended family members of waking them up and disappointing them is exactly the wrong behavior. As a matter fact, most sleep experts recommend against waking someone up who is experiencing a night terror. The child isn’t being disobedient-they’re sleeping. Night terrors are believed to be because by genetic factors, certain medications, and fever, and can be managed quite well if they are treated accordingly.
Or how about the behavior of nocturnal enuresis-or bedwetting? This is another problem that even psychologists and other mental health professionals didn’t get right until fairly recently. There was a time when a child who was initially continent-that is they were trained to hold their bladder at night, but now began to wet their bed was interpreted to have an emotional problem, particularly directed at one or both of the parents. Psychologists with a heritage from the Freudian psychoanalytic era interpreted nocturnal enuresis as an emotional problem due to some type of conflict occurring at a very young age. I have also known people to interpret bedwetting as an act of defiance from a child who then, taking another primitive approach to the problem, will discipline the child for their “defiant” behavior of soiling their bedsheets.
These poor kids-what they have been shown to experience is:
No awareness of a full bladder. Sometimes the nerves that control the bladder are somewhat slow to develop and mature. In this case, a full bladder may not wake your child, especially if your child is a deep sleeper. The treatment involves a simple "bell and pad" device that trains the child to waken right away when urine activates the device. It works beautifully.
A hormone imbalance. During childhood, some kids do not produce enough anti-diuretic hormone, also called ADH. ADH slows down how much urine is made during the night. It’s the reason we all don’t pee the bed so much anymore. If you are deficient in producing ADH, your body doesn’t retain fluids and you have the need to eliminate more frequently than you would for a 8 or nine hour sleep. And it’s a pretty simple fix: a couple shots of ADH nose spray before bed will usually do the trick. Your kid won’t need the five years of psychoanalysis.
Urinary tract infection- UTI’s can make it difficult for your child to control the urge to pass urine. In addition to bed-wetting, symptoms may include daytime accidents, frequent need to urinate, passing red or pink urine, and pain when passing urine.
Sleep apnea. Sometimes when a child’s adenoids become swollen and their tonsils are irritated or enlarged, they can become enuretic as bed-wetting can be a sign of obstructive sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is when a child's breathing is interrupted during sleep. Other symptoms may include snoring and being sleepy during the day.
Diabetes. For a child who's usually dry at night, bed-wetting may be the first sign of diabetes. Other symptoms may include passing large amounts of urine at once, increased thirst, extreme tiredness and weight loss in spite of a good appetite.
Psychotherapists that are trained in accordance with the accepted standards of practice will recognize and help you to correctly analyze the more subtle patterns of thought and behavior most people usually miss. This is true for most therapists by virtue of their training, however therapists trained in psychodynamic theory are particularly adept at detecting these patterns that are largely unconscious, and making the person aware of them. In this way, therapy generally focuses on addressing root “problems” (e.g. why you can't share your feelings; why you tend to choose the same kind of person as a perspective mate; why a certain kind of person “really bugs you”), while social support generally provides relief from “symptoms” (like feeling nobody understands you). Neither is necessarily better — it all just depends on what kind of support works best for you right now.
Which brings us back to the question: How do I know if I need therapy? How do you know if your situation calls for professional or social support, or just maybe a good friend lending their ear? While it's hard to know for certain, I would tend to look for effectiveness first. When a problem isn’t so serious, and you have tried whatever your social support network brings without results, well maybe this is a situation where seeking professional mental health treatment is a good idea.
One way to determine whether you have a problem that is more conducive to professional help is if…
your symptoms are affecting your ability to function in one or more areas of your life. For example, problems that occur both socially and in a work-related setting. Or avoiding social interaction and having trouble in your relationships.
You are having difficulty sleeping-if you are having trouble sleeping, either difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, and particularly when you fall asleep early and wake up after a few hours of sleep, exhausted, but unable to continue sleeping.
When school or work performance is deteriorating.
When a child's school performance is deteriorating and a legitimate learning disorder has been ruled out or the child needs supportive therapy as an adjunct to their academic remediation program.
When you found yourself in the midst of an addiction. Addiction is a complex, chronic brain condition influenced by genes and the environment that is characterized by substance use or compulsive actions that continue despite harmful consequences.
You are suffering from depression, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
You are having thoughts of hurting yourself or others.
If interested in obtaining psychotherapy, you might think of your first session as a kind of “audition” whereby you are self-assessing your level of comfort and confidence in the therapist. Trust your own instincts!
To schedule your first appointment (my audition), please call 941-239-3045 An initial screening will be done via the phone.
If we feel compatibility with one another and I believe that I am able to help you, the appointment will be scheduled. If I am unable to help you, I will attempt to assist you in finding a therapist who can help.
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