Did you know that 23 percent of American adults reported increased mental stress during the past year? It is truly a staggering percentage, reported by Statista, and it depicts the seriousness of the mental health issues. It is the reason why people are increasingly seeking mental health counseling. If we look at the 2019 figures, over 40 million adults sought counseling during the year.
If we look at the present scenario, these stats seem to be making much sense. Due to the pandemic, we may get stressed once and opt for seeking professional help. The truth is there’s maybe a large number of people, equally affected by Covid, who haven’t sought counseling yet.
How does the pandemic stress us out? The first reason could be the departure of a loved one because of it. Or, it could be due to the trauma an individual faces while working as a healthcare staffer. The staffers are at a greater risk of going through trauma because of frequent Covid-related deaths before their eyes.
Here, the role of mental health counselors comes into play. These are the experts who have a talent for listening to people well and responding to their queries. These professionals have a particular skill in talking people out of trouble and cordially tending to them.
However, such experts must have the mandatory qualification to do their job well. But given their busy schedule, they aren’t able to focus on expanding their academic credentials. Fortunately, online learning has proven to be a beneficial way of pursuing education. Most of them seek to earn a counseling degree online that further develops their skills and capabilities to excel in the field.
Now, let us see how counseling can help with mental wellbeing.
Table of Contents
1. Allowing the Process of Catharsis
The first way a person benefits from counseling is through the process of catharsis. It is purely a psychological term that needs some more explanation. It is a process that allows you to let the damaging steam out and rid of the emotions growing inside. It is a method to come to terms with your feelings.
When you talk to a learned professional, they talk you through your stress and confusion. Such experts help you discover the ways to speak out about what’s perturbing you. They work with you step by step until things are no longer untold or unheard.
2. Coming to Terms with the Issues
We have feelings embedded deep down in us, and they often go unnoticed. Day after day and week after week, such feelings continue to grow inside us, sometimes taking the form of a volcano. If we let these feelings be, they are bound to cause further issues for us, both from the short-term and long-term perspective.
A psychologist helps you get to terms with such emotions. They enable you to discover what you may have been turning a blind eye to or ignoring. With their professional help and expertise, they help you gain the courage and the strength to deal with such feelings.
3. Finding Your Missing Strength
Everyone has the strength within them,and it is enough to help people scale mountains and surmount any trouble. Such strength gives us the courage to face the hardships of life and eliminatenegativevibes. But what happens is we do not realize the power of such force or utilize it properly.
Since psychologists are experts at what they do, they talk to us in detail to discover and utilize that energy. They spend hours helping us use our positive energies to overcome the negatives in an easy, viable way. They enable us to see the bright side of life and redevelop the missing strength.
4. Developing the Coping Skills
Coping is a powerful part of our lives, and it is what helps us get through a particular hardship. Our coping mechanism becomes activated whenever we feel challenged, physically or mentally. It works like a knee-jerk reaction, preparing us to face the challenge head-on immediately.
The counseling experts spend hours enabling us to use the coping mechanism to our advantage. The professionals are knowledgeable about the best ways to use a coping strategy and help us adopt the same. It gives us the breathing space to face hardship with renewed courage and zeal.
5. Prioritize Personal Goals
Everyone has goals, and they feel the urge and the need to achieve them at their optimum. But as we progress, we sometimes become lethargic and fall back on some of the set targets. It is a part of life, but sometimes we feel like we cannot move an inch forward. That is where the counselors come in.
Such experts hold detailed consultations to enable us to identify our goals and realign them. They help us in setting priorities and ambitions and think pragmatically about achieving them. We can then set milestones and use our cognitive powers to achieve them gradually.
Final Thoughts
A counselor’s role is beneficial as it enables us to find a renewed hope in life. They help us remind ourselves of the purpose in life and to have the courage to progress towards it. With a new zeal, professional assistance, and pragmatic thought process, we soon proceed in the right direction. A counselor, therefore, comes into our lives as a savior, helping us every step of the way.