While therapy can be an empowering process that helps you grow as a person, even thinking about starting that journey may create anxiety, you may have thoughts like:

“I’m not crazy.”
“My problems aren’t that bad.”
“A therapist doesn’t know me, how can they help?”
“I’m not talking to a stranger. “

While some struggles in life can be addressed by seeking support from friends and family or be dealt with individually, there are signs that therapy should also be incorporated into your coping strategy.

In this blog post and the next one, we’ll look at eight signs therapy may be helpful to you at this time.

1. You Feel Stuck

Often people start therapy because they feel stuck in their lives and are looking for ways to become “unstuck.” You may know exactly why you feel stuck (i.e. I don’t like my career. I’m unhappy in my marriage. I can’t move on.).Or you may just have a general sense of “I’m unhappy with where my life is/who I am, and I don’t know why.” Your attempts to fix things may not seem to be working, or you may not even know where to begin fixing. Therapy not only helps solve the problem but also allows you to understand what led to it. It gives you more power to “unstuck” yourself and live the life you want.

Ask Yourself: Do you feel stuck? Are you living the life you want?

2. Your Emotions feel Overwhelming

You may have intense emotions and be unable to calm yourself down from worry or sadness. You may also be unable tostop thinking about something over and over, such as a loss, a traumatic event or death.

Ask yourself: Is the degree of your reaction to situations and people the same as it used to be?

3. You are checking out of life (i.e. drinking, smoking, using substances or distraction techniques more than you used to).

Because life and emotions can become overwhelming, you may turn to unhealthy coping strategies for comfort. However, often this “comfort” is only a distraction and an attempt to numb yourself. While this may help in the short-term, it does not deal with the underlying issue and likely will only cause more problems in your life. Unhealthy coping strategies may be as obvious as excessive drinking or taking drugs. Or they could be as subtle as watching too much television, not getting out of bed or withdrawing from others.

Ask yourself: Am I avoiding life or facing it head on?

4. Your interests have dwindled.

We often can get in a vicious cycle. When you feel bad, you may perceive the things that you used to do as pointless, exhausting or uninteresting. As result you don’t do the things that could make you feel better, leading you to feel even worse. This, of course, makes you even less likely to do what used to make you feel good. It is easy to get stuck in this cycle, further amplifying your negative feelings.

Ask yourself: Am I as motivated as I used to be?

If any of these signs fit your situation, therapy could be a useful addition to your path toward healing or improvement.

Click here to learn more about scheduling a free 15-minute consultation about how therapy can meet your needs.

Check back next week for four more signs therapy might be right for you!