Friends Or A Psychologist? Who Should I Go To?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Recently, going to a psychologist has ceased to be something out of the ordinary, this is a fairly common practice, nevertheless, there are a number of associated fears.

For example, some people are afraid that their communication with friends will cease to be deep and sincere if they regularly visit a psychologist, or, on the contrary, a friend or girlfriend may fear that a friend who has decided to go to psychotherapy will become unnecessary.

We propose to talk today about friendship and psychotherapy, what is the difference and why, in what situations friends and a psychotherapist are needed.

If you listen to yourself, you may already have the answers to these questions.

Someone may say: "Why a psychologist when you can share with a friend?" Indeed, friendship from early childhood takes a big place in our life, we share our joys and worries with friends. You are very lucky if you have friends who can support you in a difficult moment in word, in deed, not to condemn and not give unnecessary unsolicited advice. Next to such people in a crisis, a person feels safe, you can call such friends safe friends.

Crisis support, activities, walks and mutual help are what we all need friends for. But what if you want to change your life, achieve new goals, but you can't do it? Situations repeat the same, yes, friends support, but can this support get the old problem off the ground?

This is where it might be worth considering working with a psychotherapist. In psychotherapy, the client learns those skills that he did not have before, begins to get to know himself better, to truly hear his goals, desires and needs, in a safe atmosphere of contact, he can meet with blocked feelings, traumas, childhood grief, live them and begin to let go all this load.

Then miracles become real: mood improves, strengths appear, ideas on how to implement your projects, maybe even healthier. The person hears himself and becomes happier. Then your relationships with friends, family members, colleagues can become warmer, deeper, and at the same time, the manipulators in your environment will become visible and you can move away from them to a safe distance so as not to get hurt and not lose strength.

Visits to a psychotherapist are not like meeting with a girlfriend for tea or wine, this is not only and not so much a conversation, psychotherapists have a whole arsenal of techniques, practices that will help you learn to defend your boundaries, hear your needs, be able to satisfy them yourself, in contact or postpone, not be afraid to refuse or hear a refusal, go through grief when you break up with a partner, when you buried a loved one.

There are a number of bodily symptoms, diseases, in which there is a psychosomatic component. This does not mean that a psychologist will replace your doctor, but it is possible that with an integrated approach of psychotherapy and medicine, treatment will be more effective. Often illnesses contain fears, past unhealed trauma, maybe you want to know what your body is telling you?

There is another situation where psychotherapy is useful when working with the body, this is psychological infertility. When both partners are medically healthy, and the child does not come. Here it is worth investigating together with your psychotherapist what will change in you with the advent of the child, how will your relationship with your partner change, what fears are there, maybe childhood traumas prevent you from becoming parents? Or they do not interfere, but protect from hard feelings from childhood, which may return with pregnancy and childbirth. In support and safe contact with the therapist, you can find it, live it and let it go.

In conclusion, I would still like to answer the question to whom to go to a friend / girlfriend or a psychologist.

If you are happy with your life and mostly happy, if you do not want to change anything dramatically, then communication with friends is enough for you, but if you have grief, misfortune, if old wounds hurt, if something incomprehensible happens in your life, or on the contrary, what you want does not happen, if you are in a crisis, consult a psychologist.

You can go to a psychologist and continue to communicate with friends, you will not have fewer topics for conversation, rather there will be even more of them, since with your interest and following the therapist's recommendations, changes in your life will not be long in coming.