“I can’t imagine doing your job as a counselor. How do you listen to people’s problems all day? That must be so stressful!”
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that…
Well, I DON’T listen to people’s problems all day. That WOULD be miserable, for them and for me.
In early sessions I tell people it is “my job is to work myself out of a job.” If therapy is going well, then things get better, and we finish. If they don’t get better…then we have to rethink the approach and maybe even have them go work with someone else.
As I mentioned recently, tt’s actually a cool time to be in mental health right now. We have so many tools and strategies to teach people.
Functional medicine helps people see how nutrition and deficiencies can cause and heal things like depression and anxiety. When someone says they can’t really understand why they feel how they do (because in general life is good) I try to get them to have an evaluation by an integrative medicine practitioner. Because there’s no talk therapy to get their vitamin D or inositol levels up. And since most serotonin (a big feel good neurotransmitter) is made in the gut, intestinal health has to be looked at for chronic conditions.
Polyvagal theory explores how to engage the nervous system in a helpful way. Yoga, music therapy, simple breath work, can give folks a chance to finally feel good in their bodies.
Neurolinguistic programming, which totally changed how I work in my practice, lets me teach clients to “edit” their memories. We have great success stopping memories from popping in uninvited, getting rid of nightmares, and resolving phobias.
There’s even a way to use neurolinguistic programming with aromatherapy, my other love! Oh, and people don’t even have to tell me about what they are working on if they don’t want to.
Honestly the biggest challenge often is figuring out any reasons someone might subconsciously be cautious of change. (Which is normal, it just needs to be brought into awareness so we can work with it.)
Milton Erickson taught his patients and students, “don’t dam the river, channel the river.” The river is headed somewhere important, but we can have some say in how it gets there.
If you've had therapy and didn't find it helpful, or have been worried that it would be years of reliving all the yuck in your life, please know that there are really good targeted treatments now.
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