Myth #1: Living with Mental Illness

Hi there!

Welcome back to the MoodiNews. Every Thursday, we discuss a variety of matters related to mental health and self-improvement.

I’m so glad you’re here.

Today, we will continue our current series on some of the most common myths in therapy, starting with one of my personal favorites! YAY!

The myth that we will be debunking today is that: Therapy teaches you how to live with mental illness.

This myth is not so much a fallacy as it is a misconception—so let’s explore it further today!

Here’s the issue: A lot of people doing therapy these days (both clients AND clinicians) talk about therapy like it’s a tool for learning how to manage and live with mental illness.

This means that, rather than teaching people that it’s possible to live without depression or anxiety or drugs, therapy has instead become a place where people spend a majority of their time talking about and making space for their symptoms rather than fighting to eliminate them altogether.

Put another way—therapy is not supposed to be just a tool for ‘coping’ with mental illness.

Rather, therapy was initially designed to help ELIMINATE people’s suffering, not just accomodate it.

Clients are often surprised when I tell them that it’s actually possible to make a full recovery from many of the most common mental health problems that we hear about today—things like anxiety, depression, addiction, eating disorders, insecure attachment, and low-self-esteem, just to name a few.

(This means, for example, moving through the world with NO anxiety at all most days... Can you imagine?!)

This post is not intended to discourage individuals who are new to the therapeutic process and who are still working to stabilize themselves—that is, of course, a natural part of the process when first starting out.

Furthermore, in cases of severe or serious/persistent mental illness (SPMI), people’s lives can and do end up revolving around their diagnosis, which can be frustrating, debilitating, and require life-long clinical support.

However, I am an optimist, and, in my experience, people all too often reduce the efficacy of therapy to its most impotent form (i.e., a coping tool), rather than realizing it’s potential to actually CURE or altogether stop patterns of distress in people’s lives.

In short, the idea behind dispelling the myth that, Therapy teaches you how to live with mental illness, is to instill hope that it is possible to accomplish a long-term recovery from mental illness without being prone to constant relapse.

In other words, therapy is about HEALING, not just coping. It’s ultimately about ELIMINATING mental illness, versus simply living with it.

Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

To summarize, it is absolutely possible to recover from many of the most common mental health concerns, or at a minimum, get to a point of keeping our symptoms at bay (which is not the same thing as coping with symptoms that we don’t understand or would prefer to ignore).

The idea behind therapy is to put ourselves back in the driver’s seat of our own lives and to take a less passive stance when it comes to our personal well-being.

Just remember that therapy can teach you how to live differently so that you a) no longer have to struggle with old, incessant baggage, b) can make a full recovery rather than just coping or suffering long-term, and c) no longer need to depend on a therapist in general just to manage your day-to-day affairs.

Hang in there and know that there is more to life than living with a treatable mental illness.

As I like to remind my clients, it’s better to spend your whole life seeking to uncover your innermost potential (and maybe even make a full recovery!) than it is to merely coast through life with lousy coping strategies and a miserable outlook.

So, if you wish to live a fuller life and recovery from whatever concerns are currently ailing you, then go out there and make it happen!

As the saying goes: Where there is a will, there is a way—and I know from my work as a therapist that there are a lot more tools in the world for managing mental illness than most people often realize.

Next week, we will explore another common myth about therapy, that Therapy is where people go to talk about their feelings.

Stay tuned, and I’ll see you then!