THE MYTH OF MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELING

Mental health counseling is a professional service that is rendered by trained and skilled clinical social workers, mental health therapists, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.  Counseling is not just simply listening to a friend or a loved one but requires a combination of education, experiences, and skillsets. It is a professional relationship between a skilled professional and client.  Many people are hesitant to begin counseling for various reasons.  

Here are some common myths about counseling.

The counselor can heal me.  

The counselor is a guide for clients to help them in managing mental health symptoms or healing past trauma, but the counselor's role is simply the guide.   You are ultimately responsible for your own healing.  The counselor can give you the tools in facilitating this emotional/mental health growth, but you must be willing to do your own work.

If  I am not feeling better in one session, then the counseling is ineffective.

While some people may be able to resolve issues in a few sessions, for many people this is simply not the case. A risk of counseling is that it may bring up upsetting memories that may cause some emotional distress.   If you continue to work on yourself in counseling, then you may find that these symptoms may lessen over time as you learn skills to self-regulate.

Counseling is a passive process.

Counseling is an active process that involves learning and applying skills that you are taught in therapy.  This means that you are willing to work on yourself outside of the therapy or counseling sessions, complete therapy homework assignments, and monitor your behaviors and thoughts between sessions. You will do much more than lying down on the therapist's couch.

Counseling is ongoing.

The role of counseling is to help individuals improve their emotional and mental health functioning and a goal of treatment is developed between the counselor/therapist and client.  Therapists and counselors want to help clients work their way out of therapy and improve functioning.

These are some common myths about counseling and there are others.  Please reply to this post if you  would like more information about any of these myths or myths that were not mentioned in this post. 

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