Self Help + Therapy: A Powerful Combo for Healing & Growth
Self Help + Therapy: A Powerful Combo for Healing & Growth
Many people consistently seek ways to improve their lives. Some are based on need, like people who are really struggling to feel ok and are seeking help out of necessity. For example, someone who buys a book on how to overcome anxiety because they are feeling really anxious at work. Others just want to enhance their lives by understanding themselves and the world around them a bit better. Perhaps they are in a healthy relationship but want to make sure it stays that way. For whatever reason that draws people in, self-help resources can be tremendously impactful to a person seeking them out.
There is no shortage of self-help resources, such as books, podcasts, online courses, apps, support groups, and more. These resources are often authored by mental health professionals and convey important aspects of psychological knowledge and at times, very specific steps to improve someone’s life. While these sources can be incredibly helpful for individuals’ mental health journey, they are limited in what they can offer. Therefore, self-help resources can often be even more effective when paired with professional psychotherapy.
Therapy takes the tenets taught and utilized in self-help resources and offers connection and accountability, making the resources more useful and immediately applicable.
Understanding Self-Help & Its Limitations
Self-help techniques help people learn how to take control of their mental health journey through teaching stress management, embracing healthy relationships and rejecting negative ones, fostering personal growth, and more, while being affordable and done at one’s preferred pace.
Even with these great benefits, there are still limitations. General self-help books, even if created to address a certain topic that a person is experiencing, can not fully dive deep into a person’s specific background, behaviors, thoughts, and emotions.
Therapy can help take the self-help building blocks and put the pieces together. It allows for specific, personal issues to be addressed, provides more detailed guidance, and helps the individual apply what they are learning to their specific situation and goals. Finally, many mental health issues have their roots in or can affect relationships. Turning to a professional relationship (rather than a book, online course or podcast) to work through difficulties in relationships just makes common sense.
The Role Of Therapy In Enhancing Self-Help
Personalized Guidance and Insight
Therapists are trained and licensed to understand the complexities of mental health. In therapy, clients receive one-on-one support from someone who can offer guidance, feedback, and help to create strategies and shifts that align with the person’s specific situation and struggles. During therapy, clients can often bring up books that they are reading on a specific topic and have the option of discussing ways that they can apply the book’s wisdom to their own unique situation. Sometimes insights from self-help are misinterpreted or taken out of context. Therapists are skilled at identifying and correcting these misconceptions.
For example, while a self-help book can provide tips and guidelines for managing anxiety, a therapist can help the person dissect those guidelines, figure out which ones will work for them, and apply them accordingly. After time spent trying these guidelines, the therapist can help the individual evaluate whether or not the current process is working and suggest any necessary adjustments.
Emotional Support and Accountability In Therapy
Therapy is a safe and non-judgmental place where people can express their feelings and thoughts honestly and openly. Those who struggle with loneliness, isolation, or inadequacy can benefit from a therapist helping by walking with them through their healing and growth.
Additionally, therapists can hold clients accountable for doing their part in positively transforming their lives. This is not for the purpose of checking off a box; rather, therapists typically care very much about their clients and their growth.
Deeper Exploration of Underlying Issues In Therapy
While helpful, one aspect of the self-help industry is that many resources advertise a fix-it-quick or immediate improvement. Therapy, on the other hand, digs deeper into a person’s mental health struggles, uncovering and addressing the struggles at the root, and helping discuss and implement strategies to address the root causes.
Some refer to such quick fixes as slapping a band-aid on a problem. Yes, individuals will have some protection from the band-aid temporarily. However, until they address what’s causing the issue and learn to properly manage it, the band-aid isn’t going to lead to long-term benefits.
Transformations take place over time – and trying to make overnight shifts will often lead to disappointment – and perhaps giving up altogether. Therapy allows the time and space to dig deeper into a person’s history, behavioral tendencies, thought patterns, relationship experiences, and feelings. Therapy helps lead to more stability and more sustainable and profound changes.
Interpersonal Growth
Several therapists at Nashville Psych lean heavily on psychodynamic and relational approaches. Practically, this means that they recognize that if a client is behaving a certain way in the therapy relationship, it is likely that they are behaving similarly outside of the therapy room. Those identified patterns are part of the puzzle of what is working or needs extra support in clients’ relationships.
For example, let’s say the client frequently arrives late. There are a range of emotional reasons that individuals might arrive late to sessions. The therapist will likely prompt the client to speak about potential emotional reasons for their tardiness. Perhaps the therapist will express their feelings on the matter by saying something like, “When you are late, I worry that you aren’t prioritizing yourself in this process.” If the client responds defensively or shuts down, that is likely how they typically respond to someone expressing their concern for the client. That insight can be applied to improving relationships outside of the therapy room. Both individual and group therapy are excellent for addressing interpersonal challenges.
Integrating Different Therapeutic Approaches
Therapists have access to other therapeutic approaches and treatments that are more than likely not available merely through self-help avenues, such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), SomEx, or psychodynamic therapy, as described earlier when the therapist-client relationship itself is a tool for growth.
How Can We Support You On Your Mental Health Journey?
Whether you are just starting your self-help journey or have been at it for a while, Nashville Psych is here to support you and help you heal, grow, and thrive. Contact us today and take your mental health and self-help journey to the next level.