Signs you’re ready to see a therapist
Signs You’re Ready To See a Therapist
Anxiety and depression are some of the more common moods we navigate from day to day. It can be triggered by a setback in your professional life, loss of a loved one, or a culmination of daily stressors. Nevertheless, we typically bounce back. And sometimes professional assistance can help guide us when we are not able to do it on our own.
Let’s explore when you should consider seeking professional help…
Signs That You Need To Go See a Therapist
Are You Having Difficulty Regulating Your Emotions?
Feeling intense emotions such as anger or sadness is a normal experience. However, sometimes it can be difficult to manage their impact, especially if they become more persistently frequent.
Studies have suggested that individuals often miss the telltale signs of depression because they often attribute persistent irritability to daily stressors and therefore what they are experiencing is perceived as completely normal.
Nonetheless, if you are finding it more and more difficult to self-regulate your emotions, there are skills you can learn that can help reduce their impact on your daily life.
Are You Having Trouble Performing at Work or School?
Another noticeable sign that it might be time for you to seek professional help may be that your work or school performance might have a visible decrease over a period of time. Whether it is in your professional or academic life, performance is key, and a decrease in performance is a common sign that someone may be struggling with managing their psychological or emotional stability.
Studies have correlated mental health to reduced attention span, concentration, as well as memory retention. Additionally, the reduced performance can also result in a lack of interest and overall work productivity.
Seeking professional assistance can help ensure job security, and in some cases, safety for self and others. For example, a construction worker suffering from low performance may have a divided sense of attention that increases the risk of making a mistake that could result in collateral damage. This would not only jeopardize his position at work, but it also puts other lives at risk as well.
Are You Experiencing Changes or Disruptions in Sleep or Appetite?
Anxiety, depression, as well as other mental health conditions, can cause disruptions in sleep quality and eating habits. Stress is a normal part of life, that is, until it begins to impede on our normal daily functioning such as eating, sleeping, and engaging in simple tasks.
Sleep and food are essential to our physical health. And our mental health is no exception. Monitoring your sleeping and eating habits can increase your awareness to whether professional help is needed.
A therapist can help you navigate these disruptions by learning and implementing interventions and copings strategies to help reduce the impact of mental health conditions on sleep and eating habits.
Are You Struggling To Make, Build and Maintain Relationships?
Struggles with mental health affect more than just the person experiencing the symptoms. A deterioration in mental health often impacts our connection with others further making it difficult for everyone involved to navigate its impact on the relationships and dynamics.
Some individuals may pull away from connections and supports while others may depend a lot on others for emotional support. Either way, the relationship shifts and moves in directions that can be challenging to support and maintain for all individuals involved.
Cultivating secure and emotionally supportive connections with others is detrimental to overall wellness. And sometimes these connections can be difficult to find, let alone maintain. Nevertheless, there are skills and coping strategies that can help us find effective ways to navigate these connections and build healthier and stronger support systems.
You No Longer Experience Joy Doing the Same Activities You Used To Enjoy Doing.
Declining mental health can also leave people feeling disconnected from many things they used to show a visible amount of interest in. They no longer find meaning and fulfillment in these activities and reduce their engagement significantly.
This often leads to persistent feelings of emptiness which can increase the risk of engaging in isolative behaviors and avoiding engaging with others all together.
Wrap-up
Addressing your mental health is essential for your overall wellness. And you don’t have to do it alone. A therapist can provide you with the tools and skills that can help you move through challenging moods and behaviors and help you identify areas in your life that may need some shifting or change. A therapist can also help you reclaim and utilize areas of strengths and supports that already exist in your life and explore ways you can utilize them as you do the work that is necessary to evolve into a better version of yourself.