Can counseling make it worse?

Counseling is a recommended treatment for everything from anxiety to posttraumatic stress disorder. Research has shown that counseling is a great way to address common mental health conditions, support through challenging moments in life, positive communication skills, and even relationship repair. Can counseling make things worse?

It can feel that way sometimes. When we venture into counseling, we’re typically in a place of wanting to feel better, wanting to do better in some area of life. We walk in feeling low and want to walk out feeling great. The difficulty with that is that often the issues that lead toward counseling are unaddressed things, problems, and situations that have been left brewing or on a mental shelf for years.

We had a hurt, abuse, something in our past, and we don’t talk about it, we don’t process it, and then our therapist starts gathering information to help us or starts working with us to process feelings and events. Now we’re scratching the things we’ve had put away for years, which can come with a fair amount of pain.

Sometimes, therapy is the first time you can talk freely about past hurts and a prior trauma in some cases. As you begin to sort through and connect dots, you’ll also learn new ways of thinking and coping skills, which are helpful. You’re also allowing yourself to discuss and feel things that you may not have before. It can be painful.

It may naturally be painful and feel as though you feel worse before you begin to feel better. There are benefits to putting in the effort and time in therapy. While symptoms of depression or anxiety may be relieved quickly with medication, skills learned in therapy last throughout life and carried over into other areas of life. Commonly, people utilize both medication and counseling to address mental health conditions.

Therapy can feel painful at first, but this improves over time. Counseling comes with some great benefits, including:

• Learning about yourself
• Achieving goals
• Having more fulfilling relationships
• Increasing healthy habits and improving overall health
• Improvement in virtually all areas of life
• Learning positive communication skills
• Learning coping skills for specific problems
• Using a research-supported method to address problems

If you’re considering counseling, research counselors in your area and online. One of the most important factors in successful therapy outcomes is the therapeutic relationship, meaning that finding a therapist you feel comfortable with is important.