It can be harder to heal mental wounds and illnesses than physical ones …

Ugly stigma and gross ignorance cause some to think clinical counseling is only for the weak.

Not even close!

It’s actually not for the faint of heart!

There’s so much more to counseling than just therapy and/or medication. That’s because it can often be harder to heal from mental wounds and illnesses than it is from physical ones.

Why?

Because healing from mental wounds and illnesses more consistently requires a holistic and sustained approach to treatment than some physical health issues do.

Beyond the brain health (mental, emotional, behavioral) component to counseling, you’ll also have to work on:

Your spiritual life. You’re a spiritual being with a soul – miss that and you miss the person! Our mental and emotional life is intimately interwoven with our spiritual life, so you’ll have work to do in this area to accomplish full healing.

Your physical well-being. How you care for your physical body directly impacts your mental well-being. It’s COMMON that to achieve healing for mental health issues or mental illness, you may have to make real changes in your physical health, such as adopting exercise and good nutrition as a permanent lifestyle, changing (improving) your sleep patterns, changing your breathing patterns, learning physical relaxation techniques, and more.

Learning to understand your temperament. Temperament is how God has “wired” you, and that will never change. However, you have both strengths and weaknesses to your temperament, and healing for mental health issues or illness can require you to gain a real understanding of your temperament and learn how to nurture your temperament strengths and gain self-control over (and minimize) your temperament weaknesses.

Functional design. It’s not uncommon that the functional design for life a person has put in place is contributing to mental health issues or exacerbating mental illness and requires that changes be made.

Counseling usually isn’t as simple as a few sessions with a therapist talking about your feelings. For real healing of mental wounds and illnesses, there can be plenty of challenging work requiring expanding your current knowledge base and being equipped with new skills from a competent and experienced therapist.

It can take real courage to take on counseling, something a good counselor can help inspire you with.

The good news is that most mental illnesses can be treated so that you are able to overcome them or manage them so that you thrive with them. Doing whatever work is necessary is worth it all!

Scotty