Why do you need a psychotherapist?

We are all people. People tend to experience stress, tension, and emotional experiences of current events. It is known that prolonged exposure to negative experiences also leads to physical problems. Schools don't teach you how to cope with difficult experiences or how to build healthy relationships with other people.

A psychotherapist is not needed to make a person’s life cloudless. There will always be problems and difficulties. They are part of an adult's life. Another thing is that a psychotherapist can help you experience emerging difficulties and fears in a healthy way, and establish relationships with a new team or with friends and loved ones.

A psychotherapist is needed for situations where the problems that arise are a product of the characteristics of your character, your personality. When habitual patterns of behavior block healthy resolution of a situation in life.

The psychotherapist will also help people with fears, anxiety, insomnia, depression, experiencing neurotic disorders, loss or stress. A family therapist will help spouses individually or in pairs who cannot resolve disagreements among themselves.

The goal of personality psychotherapy is to relieve emotional stress, expand choices, change behavioral strategies, and restore the ability to cope with one's problems independently using the self-help tools that psychotherapy provides.

Psychotherapist: why seek help and from whom.

In Russian-speaking countries, the profession of psychologist and psychotherapist is unclear; many people do not understand the difference between a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, psychologist and psychotherapist.

If a psychiatrist is a doctor who received his specialty at a medical school and considers the patient’s emotional difficulties as a disease that needs to be treated with medication, then a psychotherapist is not necessarily a doctor, it can be a psychologist or social worker who has completed a special training program (usually also 5 years) in one of the methods of psychotherapy.

Psychotherapists are guided by the belief that we need to treat the person, not the symptoms.

Although psychotherapy was originally created by psychiatrists. One of them was Sigmund Freud, who subsequently founded the branch of psychotherapy - psychoanalysis. Accordingly, psychotherapists working in this direction are called psychoanalysts.

Since then, science has moved forward and now, in addition to the historically first direction of psychoanalysis, there are many new and effective directions - positive psychotherapy, the Gestalt approach, transactional analysis and others.

As a rule, most psychotherapists use several different methods in their work (if their main direction in which they were trained allows them). For example, positive psychotherapy provides such flexibility, but the Gestalt approach and psychoanalysis do not.

Psychologists, unlike psychiatrists, do not have a medical education and are primarily involved in diagnostics and may provide short-term counseling rather than therapy. Most of them are theorists, since practical counseling is not taught in post-Soviet countries, so they know the theory well, but do not have experience in practical long-term therapy, like psychotherapists.  Clinical psychologists, unlike ordinary psychologists, usually gain experience in counseling and are more prepared to work with people’s problems. Neurologists and narcologists can also provide therapy, provided they also have additional psychotherapeutic education. Prescribing pills and medications in itself is not psychotherapy, as many people mistakenly believe.

Healers and psychics, who sometimes also call themselves psychotherapists, have nothing to do with this profession. That is why it is important to always clarify what kind of education they have and what method of psychotherapy they are certified in.

The most important factor in the success of therapy is, in addition to competence, good contact, that is, compatibility. An excellent specialist with excellent training, kind, sympathetic and open, may not be right for you. This must be treated with understanding. And if you feel that you are not suitable for each other, be honest about it.  It’s normal to choose “your” psychotherapist. Just like you have your own hairdresser and your own dentist.

Psychotherapy is the correction of the client’s emotions and behavior, getting rid of complexes, uncertainty, rethinking behavior, and not just a conversation.

Often people going to a psychotherapist (while calling him a psychologist) are not ready for personal changes and the efforts that this will require. You need to understand that not all cases can be cured and proper diagnosis can be critical for further treatment. Sometimes this requires visiting several specialists (neurologist, endocrinologist, psychiatrist).

Self-medication and independent diagnosis are usually not effective. The specialist will select the methods and techniques that will best suit your personality type.  The desire to get quick results at any cost and fantasies about short-term treatments can also lead to negative results. You cannot expect to “hypnotize” a problem in one session, even if the specialist knows the techniques of classical hypnosis. It takes time for lasting results.

The same applies to fantasies about the omnipotence of psychoanalysis. Having read Freud or Jung, people think that psychoanalysis is a panacea for all psychological problems.

Psychoanalysis is usually a very complex and lengthy process (sometimes many years) and may not give the desired results.

You should not idealize any particular method of psychotherapy. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. And the more flexible the method (this is the difference between new methods), the more opportunities the psychotherapist has to select the exact tools.

Psychotherapy is indicated

• For neurotic disorders, stress
• Psychosomatics (complaints in the absence of physical causes)
• Depression (as accompanying therapy)
• Bulimia, anorexia (as maintenance therapy)
• Sleep disorders
• Sexual dysfunctions
• Behavioural disorders
• Emotional disorders

Problems that have been accumulating for years cannot be resolved in one meeting. Universities do not award qualifications to magicians, so an hour or 50 minutes of a standard session can only identify a range of problems that will need to be gradually worked on.  Sometimes this initial analysis requires several sessions.

In any case, the sooner a person turns to a specialist for help and does not delay, the more successful the therapy will be.

It is always better to prevent a problem in the early stages than to deal with an old disease with complications.

I hope this article was useful and will help you make the right decision.

I will be happy to help you online and in person in Kyiv as a psychotherapist, if you decide to use my services, click the button below to sign up for a consultation.

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