Some people think that going to psychological therapy is a symptom of weakness . However, it is a brave decision that can help you to be an emotionally more intelligent person and prepared to face the situations that arise in your day-to-day life.

Psychotherapists are trained professionals who provide you with tools to improve your emotional well-being and quality of life.

How does the psychologist help you?

Because making the decision to attend psychological therapy can change your life for the better, and gives you the opportunity to grow personally and emotionally. It can also allow you to overcome past conflicts or help you restore balance to your life.

Psychotherapy sessions are confidential, so you can feel comfortable and express your feelings and emotions as well as the experiences or thoughts that concern you.

The benefits of attending psychological therapy are as follows:

  • Provides you with tools to help you overcome conflicts that may arise in your life and reduce their impact and discomfort
  • Helps you improve your interpersonal relationships and your relationship with your partner
  • Improve your emotional health and mental well-being
  • Allows you to overcome problems at work
  • Improve your self-knowledge and empower you to face life
  • Allows you to know, test and modify those maladaptive and dysfunctional beliefs
  • It allows you to overcome the most varied problems: stress, fears, anxiety, depression, etc.
  • Allows you to find balance in your life

When to go to psychological therapy

Making the decision to go to psychotherapy is not easy, in large part because of the prejudices that exist around this practice. But psychotherapy is a very effective treatment for many of life’s problems , and many studies support its use.

Unfortunately, too often people let problems get the better of them before they get help. Since there are some cases in which it is necessary or highly recommended to seek psychological help, below you can find a list of signs that indicate that you should see a psychologist:

1. The past accompanies you constantly

Grief over the death of a loved one, a break-up, etc., are difficult situations to overcome and can affect us for a relatively long period of time. Sometimes we think that these feelings or thoughts will go away on their own, but this is not always the case. When this pain and discomfort becomes chronic it is necessary to seek psychological help .

You can read our article “Grief Therapy: Psychological Help in Coping with Goodbye” to understand why it is not always easy to overcome these traumatic events.

2. You feel a great deal of discomfort, suffering, or sadness most of the time

These traumatic situations can impair the normal functioning of a person’s life, and suffering can become something that the individual lives with on a daily basis . To a certain extent it is normal that, after some negative event, people suffer a huge feeling of emptiness, pain and confusion, as it is part of the adaptation process.

However, when these negative reactions last for a long time it can become pathological. Fortunately, this sadness and inability to move forward can be overcome with the help of a psychologist.

3. You don’t see the future clearly

While the past can haunt you and cause you suffering, it can also be devastating not to have a clear future . Lack of self-knowledge and no expectations for the times ahead affect motivation and general well-being. Psychologists can provide tools to get to know you better and to know what your wishes, priorities and talents are; and they can offer you the knowledge necessary to design and plan your future in a realistic way.

4. Existential crisis

The existential crisis can appear at any time in life. It occurs when a person has mental schemes that no longer serve him or are maladaptive, so he feels he does not know the path he should follow in life, nor can he visualize the goals he must pursue to achieve personal self-realization.

This can cause a lot of suffering and can lead to psychological disorders if the situation is not resolved correctly. Psychologists can help a person to find his or her own way in life, to restructure his or her expectations, to accept himself or herself and to develop more effective and adaptive coping strategies that will empower him or her in everyday life.

5. You have no control over your life

Perhaps you have been suffering from anxiety for some time and have realized that you have no control over your life: it is affecting you at work, in your relationship with others, when it comes to finding a partner … You may have tried to reverse the situation by exercising, reading self-help books or talking to friends, but the situation has not changed.

In these cases you should seek the help of a psychologist so that you can acquire a series of tools that will allow you to find balance in your life again.

6. Constantly negative thoughts

If you have noticed for a long time that you have thoughts that prevent you from living your life normally . For example, you are constantly thinking about catastrophic situations, you are obsessed with some idea or you have some kind of fixation, psychological therapy uses very useful techniques to solve this type of problem.

7. You feel a great aggressiveness and anger towards the environment

You may feel an aggressive impulse or great anger towards someone or the environment in general . In some cases this is a typical reaction to the frustration you feel, and can be a way of avoiding taking your share of the blame, for example, for a bad decision you have made. Psychologists can help you to better understand what is going on with you, to be more realistic and to accept yourself and the situations that affect you.

8. You are not well with your partner

Relationships are not always easy, and in many cases do not go through good times . It should not be forgotten that, as in any interpersonal relationship, each partner has his/her own vision of the world, tastes, needs and even insecurities.

Unfortunately, few people seek psychological help to solve problems in a love relationship or marriage. The psychologist can help improve communication, learn to negotiate, reach agreements and learn tools to overcome difficulties in the relationship, cohabitation and sexual problems.

9. You feel stressed

Stress, especially at work, is one of the most frequent phenomena nowadays , and can seriously affect psychological and physical health. Stress alters our lives significantly and affects our thinking and behaviour, causing physiological, physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioural reactions.

If you are experiencing stress and notice that it is affecting your day-to-day life, fortunately, psychologists can help you put an end to this problem.

10. You have difficulty sleeping

Unfortunately, psychological disorders associated with inadequate rest are very common. And this is not surprising, since we live in a very different society from that of previous decades, where everything goes very fast and technology has broken into our lives in a considerable way. Bad habits, rushing, schedules that do not favor natural rest and other variables can make us rest much less hours than would be necessary, which has a negative effect on our lives.

According to data from the Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN), 25% of the Spanish adult population suffers from insomnia . However, there are other sleep disorders such as sleepwalking, night terrors or behavioural disorders associated with REM sleep that affect the well-being and health of the person who suffers from it. Thanks to psychological therapy it is possible to overcome the different sleep disorders.

Going to a counselling centre that can help you improve your well-being

If you feel identified with any of the previous points and you have begun to notice that the situation you are in is getting bigger and is affecting your daily life, you should consider the need to go to a specialized center.

There are centres that also have an online psychology service, so you can have therapy sessions from the comfort of your home. These centres specialise in the treatment of all kinds of problems: depression, anxiety, phobias, sleep problems, relationship problems, sexual problems, eating problems, substance abuse, difficulties in coping with maternity or retirement, schizophrenia and problems associated with ageing, among others.

These centres can offer you solutions and can help you in the difficulties you are going through . However, although the fact of going to a psychologist is usually associated with a serious problem, many people seek psychological help for other reasons: to improve social skills, to learn to know themselves better, to maximize personal development or to improve communication with their partner.