When Should Someone Consider Counselling?

When Should Someone Consider Counselling?

For many people, counselling is something you turn to when life has reached breaking point. A relationship is falling apart, grief has become overwhelming, anxiety is affecting daily living, or a crisis has arrived that simply cannot be managed alone.

And, of course, those are all good reasons to seek counselling.

But it seems we might have made the threshold for asking for help far too high.

You don't have to be in crisis to benefit from counselling.

Think about how we respond when the problem is physical.

If we have a persistent pain, an injury, or something that doesn't seem right, most of us don't think twice about making an appointment with a doctor. If we break an arm, we don't tell ourselves to simply toughen up and carry on. We get it checked.

Yet when something isn't right emotionally, psychologically, or in our relationships, we can be much more reluctant to ask for help. Somehow, the idea of having our emotional or mental-wellbeing "checked" still carries a stigma that seeing a doctor for a physical problem doesn't.

It could be that part of the problem is the language. "Mental health" can sound as though we are talking about mental illness, or that something must be seriously wrong before we have permission to seek help. However, counselling isn't only for people with a diagnosed condition, and you don't need to be in crisis to benefit from talking to someone.

Our emotional and psychological wellbeing is part of our overall health. When difficulties are left unaddressed for long enough, they can begin to affect other parts of our lives - our relationships, our sleep, our ability to function at work, and sometimes our physical health as well.

So, when might counselling be worth considering?

It may be that you keep having the same argument with your spouse, even though you have promised each other that this time it will be different.

Or perhaps communication with your child has become increasingly difficult, and you are not quite sure how you got there or how to change it.

It is possible that you are dealing with grief that still seems to be shaping your life months or even years later.

You might simply feel stuck. You know that something needs to change, but you cannot quite work out what that change should be.

Or maybe there isn't one obvious problem at all. You simply find yourself asking questions such as:

"Why do I keep reacting this way?"

"Why does this relationship keep following the same pattern?"

"Why am I so angry?"

"Why can't I let this go?"

"What do I actually want?"

Those questions don't necessarily mean that something is seriously wrong. Sometimes they simply mean that there is something worth exploring.

That is one of the things counselling can provide: a place to slow down.

Life has a habit of keeping us moving. We respond to the next demand, the next argument, the next deadline, the next family problem. We can become so busy coping that we never stop to ask what is actually happening underneath it all.

A counsellor doesn't necessarily have the answers, and shouldn't be making your decisions for you. Their role is to walk alongside you, to listen carefully, help you understand what you are experiencing, notice patterns, consider your choices, and even reveal possibilities that are difficult to see when you are right in the middle of the situation.

Sometimes, simply being able to talk honestly with someone who is outside the situation can bring a clarity that is difficult to find on your own.

There is also an important distinction between seeking counselling and handing responsibility for your life to someone else. Counselling is not about the counsellor fixing you. It is about creating a safe and purposeful space in which you can begin to work through what is going on and decide what you want to do about it.

For Christians, there is another dimension to this.

Faith does not make us immune to conflict, grief, disappointment, poor choices, difficult relationships, or pain. Being a Christian does not mean that we should somehow be able to cope with everything on our own.

There is wisdom in recognising that we were not designed to carry everything alone. Scripture repeatedly points us towards the value of wise counsel, encouragement, bearing one another's burdens, and seeking help when we need it.

That doesn't mean every problem requires counselling. Not every bad day needs a professional appointment, and not every disagreement needs an outside person brought into it. Sometimes we need to pray, talk to a friend, apologise, rest, or simply give something time.

Even so, there are also times when the same difficulty keeps returning, when we are no longer coping as well as we used to, or when something in our lives is affecting the people and relationships that matter most to us.

That may be a good time to ask for help, rather than waiting until the situation becomes a crisis.

What if the better question is not, "Is my problem bad enough to need counselling?"

Instead, could it be, "Would it help to have someone walk alongside me while I work through this?"

You don't have to be in crisis to ask for help.

Sometimes counselling is not about putting a life that has fallen apart back together. Sometimes it is simply about stopping for a while, taking a breath, understanding where you are, and working out where you want to go next.

And that may be reason enough.

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