Hello,
Lately I have been overwhelmed with my schedule, finances and social life. I am always trying to improve my mental health. With all of this stress I am considering therapy, mainly for someone to talk, to process all my thoughts, and maybe help me develop ideas or come up with strategies to cope better. I have ADHD, Autism, and some other things if that helps anyone relate.
I have three main questions:
Has therapy helped you enough to be worth the time?
Is it very difficult to find a therapist you mesh with?
How do I find a therapist? From a doctor’s referral? Online service? Through insurance? (I live in the United States.)
Any experience or advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated!
Edit: I just wanted to thank everyone for your help and support! I hope everyone is doing well and has seen positive changes. And I hope all these replies help other people besides myself. I’m feeling more positive and hopeful toward finding the right therapist. Your kindness is appreciated!
Therapy is kind of like college. You go into it, to try and know what you’d like to do. Only in therapy’s case, you’re going into therapy to narrow down exactly what you think is wrong with you and finding that confirmation on whether or not you truly have something.
Talking to online friends and close ones are limited because they cannot give you medical advice. They’re there to weather your mental storms until you do manage to get to a therapist that can at least gauge the forecast.
And if I had to give one tip about therapy, try to make a series of bullet points and prioritize what you want to figure out the most from top to bottom. Things like “Why is it do I randomly snap or cry around people?” are things you probably should have on the top to talk about, as opposed to “why do I randomly make mayo sandwiches every other hour?” being the very bottom.