When Should You See A Psychologist?

Video: When Should You See A Psychologist?

Video: When Should You See A Psychologist?
Video: Psychologist vs Psychiatrist vs Doctors: What You Need to Know | MedCircle Series 2024, April
When Should You See A Psychologist?
When Should You See A Psychologist?
Anonim

When is the best time to see a psychologist? I think that if you arrange such a survey, the majority will answer - never better!

Because if I turn to a psychologist (psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, any specialist whose profession begins with the prefix psycho-), then who am I? That's right - crazy! And I really don't want people who know me to think that I'm crazy. And, even if you don't tell anyone about this - the fact of your visits to a psychologist, it doesn't matter - even in your own eyes you look like a psycho, a person with mental problems is somehow not comme il faut.

I remember how in my childhood they used to tease the words "psycho", "psychiatric". “You are a mental patient! You yourself are a psychiatric patient! I really didn’t want to be "mentally ill" in my childhood, I wanted to prove the opposite to the teasing one. At some level - conscious or unconscious, turning to a psychologist is perceived by many people as a kind of "shame", recognition of oneself as "psychiatric" and, as a result, a drop in some self-esteem. In our society, the idea is widespread that you have to cope with your difficulties yourself.

Therefore, most often they turn to a psychologist when everything is already "extreme", an already intolerable state of mind - panic attacks, severe depression, when it is already very difficult to even get out of bed in the morning …

I remember that when I was reading a book by family psychologist Karl Whitaker a few years ago, I was struck by one fact. He describes a married couple who came to see him for counseling, and among other things, reports that each of them had already undergone their own personal therapy when they were in college. This couple did not have any very serious problems, they wanted to better understand their relationship with each other, to understand what to do, how to behave, so that their marriage is happy.

For that society, it seems quite normal to go to a psychologist, a psychoanalyst is not able, "when there is nowhere further," but in a relatively calm state, with the appearance of some psychological problems, to improve his life, improve its quality. Not to get out of the "deep minus" into a more or less stable state, but from a relatively "average" state to try to improve your life.

I am glad that now, for example, to family psychologists, including to me personally, couples began to come to therapy not only in a state of deep crisis, but also, for example, young couples who have already set a wedding date or are just about to get married. They see visits to a psychologist as a kind of prevention of future more serious relationships, they try to immediately build a good, stable marriage without all those mistakes that, for example, their parents made.

One can only rejoice at this. This means that something is changing in society for the better in the perception of psychologists, psychotherapists not only as crisis specialists, such "resuscitators" who save only in very difficult conditions, but also as specialists who can help to solve current problems, deal with current problems and difficulties.

Recommended: