11 Reasons People Seek Therapy

Therapy can be a useful tool to help people better understand themselves and others, cope with difficult emotions and situations, manage changes and transitions, achieve goals, and improve their overall wellness. Despite this, 45 percent of Americans who meet the criteria for a clinical mental health diagnosis do not seek professional help. The main reason for this is a preference for self-help, followed by barriers to connecting with treatment including affordability, accessibility, and stigma around mental health conditions.

You might be wondering if therapy would be helpful for you or someone you care about. Here are eleven reasons a person might consider starting therapy:

1. You are experiencing unexpected or intense mood swings.

2. You’re going through a big change in your life such as moving to a new city, losing a loved one or close friend, ending a relationship (break up, separation, or divorce), starting school, or changing careers.

3. You find yourself turning to drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping, self-harm, or other behaviors to cope with your emotions.

4. You or someone you care about was recently diagnosed with a chronic medical condition or mental health condition.

5. You are having difficulty in your relationships with friends, family, or your partner.

6. You feel like your actions are negatively impacting people around you or you don’t feel in control of your emotions and behaviors.

7. You are pulling back from activities and people that you usually enjoy.

8. You have trouble sleeping or, alternatively, spend more of the day sleeping.

9. You are having difficulty concentrating or taking care of yourself.

10. You’ve already tried talking with friends or family but feel that you’ve run out of advice (or that advice is not helping).

11. You feel like you need someone to talk to who can be objective and supportive.
    

Art therapy can be particularly useful for people who have may have tried art therapy in the past but didn’t find it helpful. A strength of art therapy is that is allow people to process emotional content differently than in conventional talk therapy. When you talk about a problem, you use words to access emotions and eventually bodily sensations. This is called “top-down” processing. Art therapy often takes an alternate route. The sensory stimulation from art making allows direct access to bodily sensations, which can help a person access and identify emotions, and eventually find the words to develop a coherent story about their experiences. This is called “bottom-up” processing. It is especially helpful for people who may have difficulty finding the words to express how they feel due to their age, physical abilities, history of trauma, or other factors.

Prioritize you mental health in 2023. My practice is accepting new clients for telehealth art therapy on Mondays, evenings, and weekends. I work with children, teens, and adults

Weekly App Review: Finch

Screenshot from the Finch app showing some of the features of the app including goals, mindfulness activities, quizzes, and reflections.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2023! A new year means a new opportunity to reflect and develop better habits. This week I’m reviewing Finch, a habit tracking and wellness app, which might help you with your resolutions.

If you grew up in the 1990’s or early 2000’s you might be familiar with Tamagotchi (a handheld video game which required users to take care of a digital pet). The Finch app uses the idea of the tamagotchi and applies it to self-care activities. Users help their pet gain energy by setting goals, completing mindfulness activities, tracking their emotions, and developing healthy habits. Your pet grows and develops a unique personality by going on adventures and interacting with the user. The developers based Finch on research about the benefits of writing about stressful events (Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005; Koopman et al, 2005; Krpan et al., 2013; Ullrich & Lutgendorf, 2002), putting feelings into words (Lieberman et al, 2007), counting blessings (Froh et al, 2008), and writing to-do lists (Scullin et al, 2018).

Intended Use: The app is intended for health and wellness.

Target Audience: The app is listed as being appropriate for ages four and up. The interface is animated and cute which would be welcomed by children, however, most of the prompts require literacy skills (both reading and writing). The coping strategies are appropriate for all ages but actually geared towards older teens/adults.

Usability: The interface is straightforward to use. The welcome screen features an emotional check-in and motivational quote. Users can select a journey (group of habits and goals to cultivate) such as feeling more adventurous, having a tidy space and tidy mind, staying connected with friends, improving sleeping, getting more physically active, appreciating the moments in life, or even just surviving the day. Each day, the app will give the user a set of goals to complete for the day. Completing goals give your digital pet energy to go out on adventures and in-game currency to purchase outfits and decorations.

Cost: The app is free to use. Users can upgrade to Finch Plus for $5.99 per month or $39.99 per year. There is a seven day free trial for Plus. The Plus version includes access to more outfits, decorations, longer meditation/grounding activities, more control over goals, and access to all trend data (free version stores one week at a time).

Technical Requirements: Available for iOS and Android.

Pro’s:

• The app is simple to use and adds a game-like element to habit tracking and self-care. Users can choose to set reminders/notifications for check-in’s and goals as frequently as they choose. If you cannot finish a goal on a given day, you can set a reminder to do it later. Gamifying self-care can help a person be more accountable (even if its just to an animated bird) and something to look forward to.

• The app provides positive modeling for building empathy and compassion to one’s self by giving users supportive and encouraging language to use with their digital pet.

• The graphics are well-rendered and visually appealing.

• Users also have access to several helpful grounding and mindfulness tools which can be accessed through the first-aid section. This is useful to users who may be using the app to help support existing mental health treatment by reinforcing coping strategies learned in therapy.

• The only advertising in the app is for the subscription option and this is only an occasional reminder (not obtrusive).

Con’s:

• Some users might find the cartoonish style of the app to be childish.

• The app is only available in English.

Is it worth it? I have been using the free version of app for the past several months and have found it be a positive addition to my routine. As I’ve been using the app I appreciate the prompts to reflect on things I’m grateful for, express worries I’m concerned about, and vent frustrations to be helpful in appreciating what is going well and letting go of (or at least not dwelling on) things that are bothering me. I get so busy with work that I find it helpful to have gentle reminders to do small things around the home to keep my space (and mind) tidy so they don’t pile up. It doesn’t hurt to get a little encouragement for doing it too. I think that the app is definitely worth trying. I’m happy with the free version so far (I don’t really need access to all of the outfits for my little finch, Sunshine). The Plus version is worth considering, however, as this is a solid app and it supports the developers to continue maintaining/improving the app and making it free for other users.