Counseling Process

When to Start Therapy

Written by Megan Farcas, LMHC CMHIMP (Clinical Supervisor, Senior Clinician)

"I’ve been thinking of coming to therapy for the past year or so."

"I’ve always wanted to try therapy but thought 'there are people that have it worse than me'."

Statements like these are often some of the first things clients say to me in session. By the time they make it in, many feel at a breaking point amidst crisis, wishing they had sought therapy sooner. Others feel like they shouldn’t 'take' a session away from someone else who 'has it worse.' Out of these conversations I have realized there is often a misconception about when it is best to start therapy and who therapy is for.

Many clients reach out for therapy when they feel they can no longer function or in response to concerns of friends and family. While these are certainly appropriate times to seek therapy, they are not the only time. In fact, reaching out for help before you get to this point can help potentially avoid a crisis. Reaching out when you feel like you have a lot going on or when you are running out of resources can be a way to start the process of addressing stressors and developing new ways to manage them. When you can’t talk to anyone else or are starting to feel hopeless or lonely, therapy can help navigate the process of creating change. Often the first cues are difficulty with regulating your emotions, changes in performance at work or school, and disruptions in basic functions like sleep or appetite. All may be good indicators that therapy could be helpful, a space to talk through what is going on and identify ways to positively manage stressors. Therapy can be preventative to help address what is going on before you get to the breaking point. 

That being said, seeking therapy doesn’t always have to correlate with distress. Many utilize therapy to learn more about themselves. This can involve processing their upbringing or becoming more aware of their own emotional triggers. For others, therapy can help with personal and emotional development to have better relationships with others. For still others it can be a way to maintain mental and emotional health and in turn manage stressful events or triggers as they arise. These, and many more, are all legitimate reasons to engage in therapy. 

So, do you find yourself resonating with any of this? Are you interested in therapy? What’s preventing you? Are you waiting for things to get worse before you reach out? Right now could be the best time to take the first steps.

Thinking About Problems

Written by Matt Warren, LMHC MDIV (Executive Director, Senior Clinician)

What are your goals in seeking counseling?  This is a question that we ask early and often in the counseling process, from the initial intake interview on through the various stages of growth and progress.  To go anywhere meaningful, we need to understand more than just what is unwanted, unhealthy, painful, or dysfunctional about the way things currently are.  Identifying these presenting problems or concerns is important, to be sure, but we also need to develop at least some sense of how those things ought to be instead.  What would be desirable, healthy, healing, functional…sound familiar?  By sketching out these goals and aims for counseling, we will know more clearly where to focus attention, what issues to prioritize, and how to measure progress along the way.

Of course, constructive goal setting is easier said than done.  Our presenting problems can feel so complex, so intractable, so deeply rooted, and so overwhelming that the idea of setting a goal can seem like an empty and arbitrary form of fairy tale thinking.

“I just want to feel better…happier…or at least just not like this.”

“I want to fix our marriage, but it’s been so bad for so long.”

“I know I need to be a better person, but I doubt anything will ever really change.”

Perhaps you have felt this way before.  We all have at some point in time.  From a biblical perspective, we recognize that the pernicious nature of sin, which exists within us and all around us, would very much like for us to remain stuck in this sort of mindset.  If we remain stuck in a sense of futility or confusion or bitterness or hopelessness or even some elusive and abstract idea of “happiness” (as in, the kind that is not in any way grounded in “real life”), then we will be successfully impeded from experiencing the fullness of life that God desires for us.  Thinking this way about our problems is just as destructive to our souls as thinking that we have no problems whatsoever.  Thinking this way about our problems keeps us from grappling with the realities of the gospel – that Jesus has fully atoned for our sins and shortcomings, that his power is made perfect in our weakness, that his mercy is real and substantial in the midst of our greatest pain and hardships, that his saving work is meant to produce real and transformative (though often unexpected) change in our lives. 

How we think about our problems and, even more so, how we think about change and growth in the midst of those problems is of critical importance.  So what are your goals for counseling?