One Reason Counseling Is Effective
Believe it or not but the vast majority of mental illness is just a lack of interpersonal skills in knowing how to relate to others.
I joke with my clients all the time that the DSM V (the manual that catalogs psychological disorders) is just a 1000 way to feel the disconnection from, ourselves, others, and God.
For example, many clients of mine feel loads of anxiety because they lack the skills in knowing how to ask others to do something.
Others panic when saying no to an unwanted request.
You would be amazed at how many of my clients are unable to process hurt feelings and problems and instead build up until the emotions are no longer manage.
What Seems To Be The Issue?
One of the hardest tasks that cause interpersonal suffering is the inability to repair broken relationships.
The failure respond to broken relationships can be between parent and teen, husband to wife, spouse to in-laws, spouse to a family origin, or person to non-family member ( a lady at church, co-worker, friends, neighbor, etc.).
What Went Wrong?
The reason so many people lack these skills is that they never had someone to teach or model these abilities.
We are social beings that learn to operate in the world by observing and being directed by others. Then there’s a process of us practicing these skills until perfection.
I am a very sarcastic person, and my oldest son (who is 9) is beginning to enjoy and understand the art of being witty.
However, he lacks the knowledge of when and when not to engage in being funny.
My job as the parent is to model and teach him how to use his sarcasm in a way that is appropriate for the time and isn’t hurtful to others.
The modeling and teaching of my son are the natural development of learning inner personal skills.
What’s The Solution?
But what if you didn’t have this modeling or teaching?
As a counselor, I place a lot of emphasis on skills training and modeling.
My clients learn how to manage their relationships and as a result their “mental illness symptoms” decrease.
Observing and being taught interpersonal skills is one of the reasons counseling is so effective.
How Brandon Wall, LMFT Can Help
So, if you suffer from some form of mental illness in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area, it might just be an inability to manage relationships effectively.
I would love to help you in any way that I can.