For many years, mental health and talking about our problems has been stigmatized. People were encouraged to just “deal with it” and talking to a mental health professional was looked down upon as weak or as though the person was very mentally unstable. Thank goodness those times are ending and our world is now more therapy-positive and open to healing and doing the inner work. Now even celebrities talk about their therapists and therapy journeys more openly. It’s beautiful that people working on themselves has become so normalized when only a few generations ago, people were given lobotomies for talking about their mental health struggles. Mental health understanding and de-stigmatization have rapidly improved in the past 10 years. It has become more and more normalized to talk about our problems not only to therapists but also to friends and family.
Talking about our problems is incredibly important. When we don’t express our true thoughts and feelings to others or ourselves, it tends to create a lot of discomfort and havoc in our lives and can manifest as physical illness. Talk therapy gives clients the space to express themselves and their inner thoughts/world. There are many different types of talk therapy and they all have different purposes and uses. While talking to our friends and family is important and useful, it has its limitations and boundaries. Sharing with the wrong person can be damaging and sometimes our friends and family mean well but accidentally invalidate us. So with that, it’s important to have objective professional support and have a therapist to talk to and express yourself completely unfiltered.
So far in this article, we have discussed the importance and positives of talking about our problems, but there are occasions when talking about our problems isn’t helpful. Sometimes we just go around and around in circles about the same things and talking about them doesn’t solve anything and only makes you more and more flustered. When this happens we are only ruminating and going in and out of the same emotions with no solutions. Sometimes talking can make us feel more and more stuck. Talking has its limitations and that’s where other types of therapy can be more helpful for some people depending on what it is that they are experiencing and going through. I found with my personal therapy journey that talk therapy was quite limiting and that talking about the same trauma with no integration of the emotions and no solutions in sight just was making my problem worse. That’s where I discovered the power of EMDR therapy originally as a client and it inspired me to train in it to help my clients.
EMDR therapy is a type of integrative trauma therapy that works with traumatic memories, negative beliefs we have about ourselves, somatic body sensations and emotions. It can help clients integrate younger versions of themselves that are still stuck at the moment where the trauma happened. EMDR tends to attract people who have found limitations with talk therapy as well as people who have researched effective trauma healing therapies. If you’re feeling like talk therapy has been limiting for you and are interested in discussing EMDR, I would love to work with you!