5 Benefits of Therapy
Therapy is an important tool used to improve mental health by addressing thought patterns, personal history and emotions. By prioritizing mental health, you are investing in the long-term health of your brain and body. While easy to overlook or suppress, caring for and investing in your mental health will reap benefits for years to come. These are five key points on how therapy can benefit us.
1. Manage and express your emotions
By working through past and current hurt and pain, we are able to utilize therapy to help us reach our full potential, oftentimes by better learning how to process and articulate emotions. Sometimes emotions can be overwhelming, leaving us unsure of what to do with them or how to move past what we are feeling. Emotions are normal and a healthy part of being a human. Jesus also experienced the emotions that we experience every day; Jesus felt anxious, anger, compassion, sadness, and many other human emotions (Luke 22:44; Mark 3:5; Matthew 14:14; John 11:35). With Jesus as the model that these emotions are normal, therapy gives us the tools necessary to sift through and manage the intricacies of our feelings.
2. Learn from your childhood
Managing and expressing emotions can also benefit the process of learning from childhood experiences. Did you know that childhood experiences significantly impact how you function as an adult? Even those who believe they had the perfect childhood still find themselves struggling to navigate through life’s everyday experiences. This happens for a few reasons: First, no two childhoods are the same. Second, we live in a fallen, broken world filled with fallen, broken people, meaning no family is perfect. Third, subconscious messages take root in our childhood experiences, meaning our worldviews are often shaped by memories we don't actively process. Therapy helps us to look at the core of who we are by delving deeper into childhood experiences.
3. Experience healing
As human beings, we are imperfect. Whether we recognize it or not, most of us have experienced what it feels like to be hurt. This hurt is a direct result of the fact that we live in a fallen and broken world. This is made clear to us almost immediately in the book of Genesis when Adam and Eve ate from the tree that God forbid them to eat from (Genesis 3:1-7). The aftermath of this decision has affected everyone and everything. As a result, not only do we experience our brokenness, but others’ brokenness; sometimes others hurt us, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Any time we are hurt, we need healing. Therapy is a safe space in which we are able to begin that healing process. In our broken world, hurt and pain is inevitable. However, we are still capable of seeking out help that allows us to explore and process through any hurt that has been stopping us from reaching our full potential.
4. Reach your full potential
Strengths that are overshadowed by our past hinder us from achieving our full potential. As we work in therapy to experience healing from the pain we experience, we are able to find paths forward to reach our full potential. Christ has high callings for us; he carefully designed each of us with our own strengths and weaknesses. God uses our struggles to craft us into all he created us to be. 2 Corinthians 3:18 CSB says “We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.” God is continuously transforming us through our experiences to become more like Him. Therapy better enables us to move forward with a clear mind and with the mental capacity to fully engage in the calling God has designed for us.
5. Retain tools to thrive
Learning from our past is one of the best ways to practice implementing positive tools for change in the future. Jesus directly tells us that we will have trouble in this world (John 16:33). If you are a believer, how those troubles are handled should look different from a non-believer. One of the gifts of believing in Jesus is that He freely gives us peace that surpasses all understanding. In addition to the peace from Christ, it is important to develop tools and skills that can be utilized to aid in experiencing that peace. If you are not a believer, I welcome you into this space and will walk alongside you as you learn and develop tools and resources to help you cope with every day circumstances. Each person has room to grow and can benefit from learning new tools. These tools equip us to make positive changes for the future.
By engaging in counseling, we are able to experience healing that allows us to reach our full potential by learning tools to manage and express emotions, learn from our childhood experiences, and become well-equipped with strategies that will enable us to thrive. Everyone is welcome here as we learn and grow in this imperfect world together.
