The Therapy Guy

Should I See A Therapist?

February 09, 2020 The therapy Guy Season 1 Episode 3
The Therapy Guy
Should I See A Therapist?
Show Notes Transcript

Are you wondering 'Should I see a therapist'?
This episode talks about who therapists are, the type of person you may see and hopefully it will encourage you to access mental health services, because we are here to help and support you.

Support the show

Hello and welcome to the latest

episode of The Therapy Guy.

Let's say thanks for listening. Thanks.

For those people who have sent in

some questions and comments about previous episodes.

I really appreciate you taking the time

to listen and interact with me.

As you know, or for the people who are listening.

For the first time, these podcasts

are about everything mental health related.

We're slowly going to build up and tell

you guys, really about everything you need to

know about therapy, about different theories, trying to

answer all the questions that you have with

anything obviously mental health related.

So if you do have any questions, you

have any topics that you want us to

answer or discuss, then please let us know.

Drop us a comment or an email and we'll

hopefully work that into future episodes just for you.

Next week, we have our child therapists coming

in, so hopefully you'll listen for that.

They're going to be talking about their work with

young people and how they help and support them

and encourage them to have a more positive mental

health and look after themselves in a different way.

This week, though, I'm responding to a

question that I hear quite a lot.

It's about whenever I tell people what I do, I

get this question about, why do you do that?

Or how did you get into doing that?

It's unusual.

People say, I didn't expect that from you, or whatever.

Yes.

So the sort of podcast today is going to

be about who am I, who is a therapist?

Because sometimes there seems to be this mystery that's

around people who do our sort of job.

Now, for myself, people have listened before

you'll hear that, my name is Alan.

I'm a director of a couple of mental health

companies here in Plymouth, in the UK.

Now, some background about who I am.

I worked in construction for 20 years and on

the whole, most people know me really from that.

If I meet anybody in the street, it's normally somebody

who I've worked with over that period of my life.

I went into construction because at the time it was great,

it was good money and all that sort of thing, but

I always felt that I could be doing more.

I liked interacting with people, I

liked that element of working. Yeah.

And I always enjoyed it when I was

talking to customers, clients and my other colleagues.

So I decided to go back to school.

Technically, I had to go back and

relearn different schools, different skills and take

different courses with the aim of qualifying.

I didn't set out to become a counsellor as such.

What I did was I sort of followed what I enjoyed.

I started taking easy access courses.

I sort of learned what it is that really interests me.

I love learning about the brain, I love

learning about how people interact and what the

body and how our mind works.

So I started taking different courses, just low level ones

that start just basically to find my interest, see what

peaked, sort of my passion, so to speak.

It's quite a cliche word.

So once I found that, I started taking more

and more courses, which got obviously more and more

in depth, until eventually I qualified as a counsellor.

Now, people can be put off sometimes by education.

I know I was when I was in school, I didn't

do very well because at that time, and it was a

long time ago, believe me, they didn't recognise dyslexia and things

like that in the way that they do now.

So during that period of my life,

I didn't get much support and encouragement.

But now things are different.

There is a lot more help,

a lot more support for everybody.

And if you start off small, doing small things, just

like I did, yes, it helps to build your confidence.

You can become whatever it is that you want to become.

You can make the changes that you want.

In general, therapists, well, they are just like you.

They are normal people.

There's nothing special about us.

I would like to tell you different, but I

haven't got any special skills or anything else.

None of my colleagues have got special skills

or they've got in depth and special knowledge.

That's different.

But we're just normal people.

We go through life experiencing different things.

We have our ups and we have

our downs, just like you do.

So we can use our skills and our knowledge to empathise

and understand where you are and help support you from our

training to move on in the best possible way.

As part of our training, we all have to undergo

our own personal counselling and work through the things that

have affected us and brought us to where we are

at this point, just like you're going to when you're

sitting in front of the therapist.

So we do understand the process.

We are aware of what it feels like to

sit in that chair, we're aware of how much

courage and strength it takes to ask for support

and to reach out to services like ours.

But the message I want you to take

away is that we are just normal people.

We have different skills and

different knowledge to you. Yes.

You may be an expert on whatever it is that you're

doing, the career or whatever it is you're doing in life.

You have that knowledge and at times we might

come to use you or for your expertise.

So if you were, say, electrician

I know nothing about electrics.

So at different times, I will need

your skills and expertise to help me.

So it's a trade.

There's just this different knowledge base, this different

understanding that we have from our training, from

our life experiences, from understanding that we use

to help you move on.

So there's nothing to fear. All right?

We work really hard and I know my colleagues here

in the services that I own work extremely hard to

adapt their approach to everybody that comes in.

If you have any worries or you have any concerns,

then maybe ask people like myself by sending questions in,

finding out a little bit more about us.

So it helps to allow those shows and

you can get the support you need.

On top of that, we have to have

regular training, we have to have our own

regular supervision type therapy sessions as part of

our associations so we ourselves don't get too

overwhelmed with what people are talking about.

These supervisors, these line managers that people have,

they're there to protect both us and yourself.

It's a huge process and it's really well done.

And you should be going into a really professional service

that helps support and encourage the therapists to do their

best work with yourself and to be in the best

possible place to support you, leading on from that.

One thing I encourage people to understand is

that we all sort of go through life.

We all have our different

difficulties at different times.

We can always breathe through life.

It's a little bit like the weather.

There are times when it's sunny and it feels

great and we're really enjoying that lovely warm weather.

And yet there's other times when now again, these

storms hit and they seem to come out of

nowhere and everything seems to be going wrong.

It's quite normal, everybody does.

It what it is.

Those times when it's stormy, those times when

it feels dark and miserable, they are temporary.

It is like the weather.

Although I appreciate the weather might change on a day

to day basis and when you're going through dark times,

it may seem to feel like a lifetime.

Getting the right support and encouragement

is really key for you here.

These things can creep up on us.

We don't notice because we're busy, we're trying to

get through, we're just trying to manage our emotions

and slowly but surely things can creep up.

Well, that's where people like me, people like

my colleagues, they come in and it's really

just like using a different service.

Like I said earlier about using an electrician or

a plumber, if something was happening and you need

one of them service, you would use them.

It's no different what I said in my last podcast.

Really what we tend to do is we tend to

wait until the last possible moment or until we're in

crisis to reach out to services like ours.

And I'm not sure of the reason, whether

it's the stigma of using a service or

thinking that you need some professional help, but

it's just a normal part of everyday life.

As I said, we all go through this,

we all have bad times in our life.

It's really about how we deal with them,

unfortunately at the moment, otherwise getting better.

We don't get taught the skills we

need to have a positive mental health.

We just expected to pick it up as we go.

All right, so what the therapist I will do

and will help you with is learning some of

those new skills, learning and understanding about yourself so

that you can help yourself the next time if

anything happens in the future.

So I really encourage you, same as I

did in the last episode, really, to try

and access support as early as possible.

I know it can be really difficult sometimes when

there's waiting lists or you have to wait for

appointments and all that sort of thing.

Try some self help things.

There's lots of things online now.

There's lots of books and podcasts like this that can

help you sort of understand and give you some knowledge

around it to help you in the meantime.

Now, if you're really experiencing something traumatic

and difficult, then obviously there's a natural

process that we all go through.

I know when I've experienced some trauma and

difficulties in my life, it has felt overwhelming.

I haven't known what to do.

Maybe try to think about how you'd help somebody else.

So if a friend, a family member or

a colleague was going through the same thing

as you, what would you be telling them?

How would you be encouraging them to seek support

or help and maybe follow that advice yourself?

So the thing I want you to take away from

the day is that therapists, the people who help you,

the people who sit opposite you during these times, are

just normal people who have everything that happens in our

life just the same as you.

We just have different knowledge, we have different experiences

to you that you need at that time.

It may not be forever.

It's going to be for a temporary moment in your

life where in six months, twelve months, five years time,

whenever it is, you can look back and you can

look for that period of your life and say, I

was strong enough to get through it again.

Please try to seek out the support

you are the support you need.

And if something doesn't work, try something else.

All right?

I was talking this week to some people and I

was discussing about antibiotics, and I said to them, if

you went to the doctor with an infection or something

else, and the pills that the doctor or the GP

didn't give you, gave you, didn't work, you go back

and you try some other ones, you try some new

ones to help you heal physically.

Mental health is no different.

If one service or one therapy doesn't help

you, if you don't gel with a therapist

that you've got, please try a different one.

There's lots of us around.

You need to have that relationship.

You need to be able to talk to the person opposite

you, and it needs to be the right thing for you.

Every one of us needs something different.

I hope they find this helpful.

I hope you find it useful.

It comes in response, as I said, to a couple

of questions that I had, a couple of things that

people have said to me, and if you have any

comments or any feedback, please let me know.

I'm really looking forward to next week to giving you

some information around, obviously, the young person therapist who's coming

in, and hopefully he'll be able to talk to you

and explain what he does in his work, who he

helps, and maybe give you some advice on where to

go or what to do.

For now, I'm going to sign off as a therapy guy.

I hope he takes take care and look after yourselves.

Thank you for now. Bye.