Should You See a Shrink?

By

By Sherrie Campbell, PhD

It is often the assumption that if you go to therapy that you have serious problems you cannot manage on your own and there is something fundamentally wrong with you. In reality, if someone is attending therapy, the person tends to be on the healthier side of self-love and self-awareness. Because seeing a therapist is stigmatized many people who want to seek help, either often they don’t, or they keep their therapy private so they do not invoke judgment.

1. Everyone Can Benefit from Therapy: We are not here to do life on our own nor are we equipped to be 100% objective in our own lives. Therapy is the perfect way to get that objective view, get to know yourself more deeply, analyze your habits of behavior and to find solutions and resolutions to life’s everyday issues.

2. Healthy People Seek Therapy: Healthy people are on the search from continual improvement, self-awareness and better solutions to life’s problems. Healthy people are ‘ok’ being wrong in life and in taking direction. They have enough self-awareness to know when they need help and when they do not. In this way, therapy becomes a modum for continual expansion and improvement in the quality of one’s emotional life.

3. Crazy-Makers DON’T Attend Therapy: The unhealthiest people, the people who need treatment the most, are the ones who never consider therapy. In their mind’s they are never wrong, it is always someone else’s problem, and they should not have to change. Rather, the world is ‘who’ needs to change. The people who end up in therapy are those trying to deal with the relationships they have with these crazy-makers—the spouses, the children, the partners, the parents. These people, cannot benefit from therapy because they have little to no insight into themselves.

4. Own Your Personal Journey: If you have chosen to attend therapy, be proud of it. Most people who are seeing the benefits of therapy, tend to brag about how much the therapy is changing their lives. We all want to be happy and when you communicate about your therapy as a major benefit to your life you will be surprised how many people either ask for your therapist’s information or confess back to you they have also sought therapy. When you own and take pride in your growth, much to your surprise many others will take your lead.

5. Reaching Higher Levels: Therapy is that space developed and created to facilitate your growth into the higher levels of life and understanding what you wish to achieve in life. Most of our most successful people regularly attend some type of therapy, whether that be coaching, mentoring, therapy, motivational seminars, or reading self-help books. It is really all the same stuff being delivered through a different channel, a different medium. Why be ashamed of something that is improving the quality of your life?

If someone is judging you for your choice to seek therapy of some sort, it says more about that person and their ignorance and insecurity than it says about your desire to improve your life, and become a happier more satisfied person. Take hold of what you are willing to do to make this life more understandable to you and live it with confidence. Emotions are contagious, so those around you will take on the attitude that you hold about your choice to go to therapy. If you communicate that you love it and it is transforming your life, make sure to carry your shrink’s business card because you will be surprised at how many people all want the same thing: a happier and more satisfying life.

Sherrie Campbell, PhD is a veteran, licensed Psychologist with two decades of clinical training and experience providing counseling and psychotherapy services to residents of Yorba Linda, Irvine, Anaheim, Fullerton and Brea, California. In her private practice, she currently specializes in psychotherapy with adults and teenagers, including marriage and family therapy, grief counseling, childhood trauma, sexual issues, personality disorders, illness and more. She has helped individuals manage their highest high and survive their lowest low—from winning the lottery to the death of a child. Her interactive sessions are as unique and impactful as her new book, Loving Yourself: The Mastery of Being Your Own Person. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 2003 and has regularly contributes to numerous publications, including Intent.com, Beliefnet.com, DrLaura.com and Hitched.com. She is also an inspirational speaker, avid writer and proud mother. She can be reached at SherrieCampbellPhD.com