You sign up for a round of individual counseling at a local mental health clinic. You haven’t been diagnosed with a mental illness, but you are struggling with your emotions after a recent breakup. You believe counseling is the answer. That is, until immediately after your first session, when you walk out of the clinic feeling worse about yourself than when you went in.
Don’t panic. Your negative post-counseling feelings may actually be a good thing. They could be a sign that counseling is the best thing for you. Rather than calling the clinic to cancel the rest of your sessions, commit to working through the entire schedule you have already agreed to. If you haven’t seen any improvement by then, perhaps counseling isn’t the right choice.
Short vs. Long Term Solutions
Western medicine’s dependence on pharmacology may have its upsides, but it has its downsides as well. One downside is its tendency to lead us to believe we can solve every issue with a pill. This is certainly not the case when it comes to mental health.
Relationships & More, a Westchester County, New York counseling practice, says there is a significant difference between medication and counseling. Medication is a short-term solution that can take the edge off a patient’s negative emotions. Psychiatrists prescribe it for that very reason. Counseling is just the opposite. It is a long-term solution that seeks to change the patient’s circumstances.
Achieving long-term mental gain often starts with embracing short-term emotional pain. It is a lot like having a root canal done on an abscessed tooth. A root canal is terribly uncomfortable to nearly everyone. It can be painful for some. But in order to enjoy the long-term benefits of the procedure, you must first endure the discomfort it creates.
Counseling can be quite uncomfortable. During the initial stages of individual counseling, you might be faced with having to admit shortcomings and failures. You might have to deal with feelings of shame. You might leave those first few sessions feeling terrible about yourself. That doesn’t mean something is wrong. It means you are normal.
Your Mind at Work
The pain experienced during a root canal is evidence that the dentist’s instruments are doing the job. Likewise, experiencing negative post-counseling feelings is often a sign that your mind is at work in productive ways. Your mind is acknowledging what you have attempted to suppress up to that point.
Getting the mind to work is a big part of counseling. Trained counselors utilize a combination of leading questions and cognitive exercises to help their clients really start thinking about their difficulties. The goal is to help the client see their problems for what they really are.
As painful as it can be, this process is necessary. Consider the root canal again. If an abscessed tooth never produced any pain, you wouldn’t know that you needed treatment. The infection could work its way through the bone and into the soft tissue above, eventually making it to your bloodstream and killing you. Fortunately, the pain tells you something is wrong and needs to be fixed.
Getting the mind working during counseling sessions produces the kind of pain that tells you something is wrong. And when you can locate the source of that pain, you can apply an appropriate treatment.
Experiencing negative post-counseling feelings is normal. Counselors expect it. The key for patients is not to take those feelings as a sign of failure. In all likelihood, they indicate that counseling is the right solution. Sticking with it will eventually reap positive long-term results.
