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A good therapist will help you to find reasons to and ways to deal with your problems. A mental institution provides a place for people who are a danger to themselves or others to get mental health treatment.
Those are the requirements to get involuntarily committed, they're not just for extreme cases.
You can recognize you are a danger to yourself or others and voluntarily commit, or if you believe you can't commit to therapy without external help you can also voluntary commit
So a therapist will give you advice on how to deal with the issues you encounter? I'm still not really sure how it will really help with life issues. Thanks for the answer though, I'm just trying to learn what a therapist does for a person. I think I got a bit confused as to what a mental institution is.
Simply talking about stuff usually offers relief. On top of that, by trying to explain everything going on in your head to another person you end up understanding the how and the why and it helps you manage it better as well. And then they give you exercises to do and things like that which help.
Also, remember that we're talking about a therapist. Even tho they're trained and stuff, they're usually not doctors and can't prescribe medicine. At least not where I live. For antidepressants and stuff like that you need a psychiatrist.
They also help with emotional understanding- of yourself and of others.
Think of it as guided introspection. Also there may be specific things to work on.
Fear of heights? They can help with that.
Have trouble managing stress or frustration? Yup.
Need to learn healthy coping mechanisms?
Develop new habits and break old ones?
Is that inner voice of yours the biggest critic you know? Struggle with self doubt?
These are very common things that most people struggle with.
There's therapists for—well—therapy, doctors for medication, and social workers for problem living situations. However, the time away is just a break; a person has to continue all three of those aspects after they leave. Inpatient treatment is just to get started.
While they will definitely not have the answers or advice on how to solve all the issues you encounter, they do have insight into helping people deal with issues that often feel insurmountable because of mental illness. i.e. if you are depressed, and that is preventing you from finding a good job or performing adequately in your current one, they might be able to help you understand why you are depressed and what's keeping you from doing anything about it. They can help you reveal things about yourself that you didn't realize, which can help you then move forward with things that you've been avoiding or deal with things that you've been holding onto for the wrong reasons.
I see. I have been considering going to a therapist. I find myself staying in bed most days and feel tired all the time, I can't really motivate myself to get out and do stuff. Today's a good day though, I actually managed to make some food and turn on my computer to do some work.
My friends and family just keep saying there's nothing wrong with me, and I'm just lazy. Maybe they're right, who knows? I only know I haven't always been like this. I also live in Singapore, where they don't really care too much about people's mental health, just their productivity, so maybe that's contributing to their opinion.
Thanks for the answer though, it helps a lot. 😁
If it helps, "unintentionally lazy" is kind of not a real thing. There's always a cause if you want to be doing something but can't bring yourself to do it. Lazy is choosing to do nothing with your time on purpose. You don't sound lazy, you sound as though something is preventing you from doing what you want to do.
“Can’t get out of bed and tired all the time” are hallmarks of depression. I’m not saying you’re depressed, don’t let someone on the internet diagnose you. But a therapist can really help you understand what’s going on. Meds can be a life changer in a lot of situations.
You should know that depression usually doesn’t feel like “super sadness” and crying all the time. It’s more of a numbness, a disconnection from life. Things don’t make depressed people happy, everything is just turned down.
I've been to a bunch of therapists in my time.
They're not just people to talk to about your problems. Find a friend or family member or write a journal or something for that.
Basically, if you have a harmful behavior, a therapist can help you understand what's causing it and maybe correct it. For example, in my case I worry constantly about my work. The the point where it's more or less paralysing and I'm afraid to leave my house. Therapy can kind of help me dig into the underlying misconceptions which cause the worry.
For me, personally, 100s of hours of therapy was nowhere as beneficial as reading a few books about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT). Learning about these therapies isn't enough, you have to put them into practice which is hard work.
That said, feeling tired and unmotivated can be caused by a plethora of different physical and mental ailments. Honestly I think step 1 would be to talk to a GP. Here in Australia you can get a full panel of bloods that will show if you're deficient in any vitamins.
A mental institution is not the right place for you. We are all of us a bit messed up in the head. If you're 20% messed up and I'm 40% messed up, being somewhere surrounded by people who are 80% or 90% messed up would not be a nice place for either of us to recuperate. Institutions are usually for people who are at risk of harming themselves or others. Another commenter said that's only for involuntary patients but honestly, you'd only volunteer to be in a place like that if you acknowledged that you were at risk of harming yourself or others.
Talk to your doctor asap. Staying in bed all day, feeling tired, and not daring to do anything looks like a depression (or may be some other disease)
Being lazy is stuff like, staying 30 minutes more in bed, taking the car instead of the bicycles, leaving work early to chill at home.
Your 'friends' behaviour is my mental health professional are useful, unlike your friend they won't make you feel guilty and adress the psychological mechanisms behind it, with or without medications depending on your specific case
First off, therapists can be accessed without institutions. Second, a therapist will help you to learn to recognize your own patterns, strengths, and weaknesses, and will help you to learn from, process, and grow though experienced trauma. They can also help with recognizing emotions, toxic behavior (either your own or someone else’s), and give you tools to adjust.
It sounds like you feel helpless. You're having difficulty understanding how a therapist can help because you see all of your problems as "uncontrollable things that happen TO you."
The point of the therapist is to change how you view yourself and your world. You think that the only way your life could get better is for some external force to remove your problems, but YOU can fix the problems yourself, or, at least have the ability to continue living a happy life despite the problems.
Ah I think I understand. The therapist doesn't really solve any of my problems, they just suggest steps I could take to fix them myself, or learn to accept things?
Everybody has problems. But not everybody is compelled to lay in bed all day because of them.
The therapist can help you learn how to coexist with your problems.
I'm trying to think about a good medical analogy for what therapists and psychiatrists (that both prescribe meds and do therapy).
The best analogy I can come up with is thinking about mental health in 2 categories, and using medical treatment as an analogy like a previous user mentioned. You can have low level mental health issues where a little therapy is needed to reset your approach maybe using therapy every couple weeks for 6 months. Or you can have a serious condition that results in a threat to your or others life. That that doesn't have to be death, it could be serious illness or physical injury.
It's like the difference between someone needing a physical trainer at the gym to get back into shape, where you can white knuckle the process on your own but it's WAY more efficient to get outside guidance. That example is someone with low level mental health problems. Then there's the severe stroke victim in a coma for 3 months, this person will NOT benefit from a physical trainer, they need a medically trained physical therapist. This example is someone suicidal and non socially functional with MDD, or bipolar disorder that is cutting themselves, and other severe mental health issues. They need significant help, maybe PHP, or skilled weekly or even twice weekly therapy. And an individual can process through both low level and extreme states over the decades.
You're not sure how advice on dealing with your problems will help fix those problems?
The confusion of the OP was how would a therapist help fix financial issues? The thing about depression and other mental health issues is that they will remain even if the financial situation gets fixed (e.g. you come into a windfall). They are due to underlying problems.
Depression needs to be treated along with getting financial advice from a different expert.
The same procedure applies to depression as well.
I think OP was confused that financial problems cause depression rather than it being a separate thing that is exacerbated by life circumstances. If that is your line of thinking then it makes no sense for a therapist to treat depression unless they're also really good with personal finance or can get the patient a good job.
There are both good and bad therapists and I've had both. In the end they do that job for a paycheck, just like all of us, and they're only human.