Science Of Sadness And Joy: ‘Inside Out’ Gets Childhood Emotions Right (NPR)
Hollywood’s version of science often asks us to believe that dinosaurs can be cloned from ancient DNA (they can’t), or that the next ice age could develop in just a few days (it couldn’t).
But Pixar’s film Inside Out is an animated fantasy that remains remarkably true to what scientists have learned about the mind, emotion and memory.
The film is about an 11-year-old girl named Riley who moves from her happy home in Minnesota to the West Coast, where she has no friends and pizza is made with broccoli. Much of the film is spent inside Riley’s mind, which features a control center manned by five personified emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust.
“I think they really nailed it,” says Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley who worked as a consultant to the filmmakers.
The movie does a really good job of portraying what it’s like to be 11, Keltner says. “It zeroes in on one of the most poignant times in an individual’s life, which is the transition to the preteen and early teen years, where kids — and, I think, in particular girls — start to really powerfully feel the loss of childhood,” he says.
As the filmmakers were working, they would fire off emails to Keltner and to Paul Ekman, a pioneer in the study of emotions. The process helped create a movie that’s true to the underlying science when it shows things like how emotions tend to color Riley’s perception of the world.
“When you are in a fearful state, everything is imbued with threat and uncertainty and peril,” Keltner says. And when Riley is sad, he says, even her happy memories take on a bluish hue.
The filmmakers get a lot of other scientific details right. Inside Riley’s head, you see memories get locked in during sleep, experiences transformed into abstractions, and guards protecting the subconscious.
There are a few departures from the scientific norm. Long-term memories are portrayed as immutable snow globes, though scientists know these memories actually tend to change over time. And Riley gets five basic emotions instead of the six often described in textbooks. (“Surprise,” apparently, didn’t make the cut.)
Also disgust is present in a pretty mild form — the reaction a child has to eating broccoli. The film plays down a more powerful version of disgust, “like if you suddenly eat a piece of food and it has a worm in it, or it’s rotting, Keltner says.
One of the film’s high points, though, is its depiction of sadness, Keltner says. In many books and movies for kids, he says, sadness is dismissed as a negative emotion with no important role.
In Inside Out, star-shaped Joy gets more screen time. But when the emotions are in danger of getting lost in the endless corridors of long-term memory, it is Sadness, downcast and shaped like a blue teardrop, who emerges as an unlikely heroine.
For kids, Keltner says, that makes "a nice statement about how important sadness is to our understanding of who we are.”
“To fully relate to another, one must first relate to oneself. If we cannot embrace our own aloneness, we will simply use the other as a shield against isolation.”
Most people enter therapy wanting something. They seek relief from debilitating symptoms. They want help making a life-changing decision. They long to heal past hurts. Couples need tools for communication. Some want better self-control. Others search for the ability to reach their potential. The list goes on.
If their therapy has the right formula of therapeutic competence, perseverance, compatibility, and good fortune, those individuals will likely reach those goals. They’ll learn what they need to learn, internalize the therapist’s message or voice, and charge into the next challenges of their life.
But many people find that therapy also provides some unexpected benefits. When they leave, they realize they’ve gotten more than they bargained for—sort of a bonus for engaging in the experience. Here are four unexpected benefits of therapy I’ve seen in my own practice:
Depth: In polite society, we’re accustomed to having mundane conversations revolving around the weather, bullet points from work, some celebrity/sports highlights, and the story we just heard on NPR or Fox News. We skip along the surface because doing so is safe and universally accepted. Therapy pushes beyond the superficial to deeper introspective questions of personal experience, historical precedents, deep feelings, and drives—a variety of topics that would never end up on a Facebook status update. When people realize talking on this level is not just interesting, but also productive and healing, they want to recreate this depth in other relationships.
Empathy: It’s kind of ironic: The majority of people come to therapy wanting to understand their own problems and why other people impact them the way they do. But once they delve into their own issues, they discover insights that help them understand their lovers, their friends, their co-workers, and their bosses on a whole new level. A light bulb goes off and they may think, “Oh, that person’s worst experience was when he was abandoned by his dad. I understand why he reacted so strongly when I bailed on our plans.” People often learn to understand the people who inhabit their lives nearly as much as they understand themselves. Or maybe they become curious and ask a few more questions, which leads to this deeper understanding.
Contagion: I can’t count the number of individuals who came to therapy to learn more about themselves and before long, their friends were interested in finding their own therapist. It happens all the time. People feel empowered and excited about growing. Their mood, attitude, and/or behavior changes, and their friends are intrigued. Occasionally, individuals in an entire friend circle will seek their own help and everyone relates on a deeper, more functional level. Fixing your friends is not a reason to seek therapy, but it sure can be rewarding when this is the outcome.
Listening: When a person spends significant time with a professional listener, that person often develops the ability to listen. They sit for many hours with someone who keeps eye contact, pays attention, and indicates reflecting or recalling past information. People in therapy know how good it feels to be on the receiving end of that kind of attention and are more likely to replicate that for their loved ones. They’ve reaped the benefits of close focused attention, had it modeled for them, and can now show it to others.
At the risk of sounding too pro-therapist, the common thread here is that therapy helps people learn to adopt some basic therapeutic characteristics. They learn to talk on a deep level, to empathize with others, to discover the thrill of self-knowledge, and to listen well. This is to be expected, as we humans often take on the characteristics of the people we spend time with, from attitudes to behaviors to communication styles.
Like I said, these are the bonuses of therapy. The main objective is helping people relieve their symptoms and underlying issues. But if they can resolve their problem while becoming better listeners and empathizers with an ability to discuss deep issues in a way that positively impacts their inner circle, what’s the problem?
Sounds like a bonus to me.
Ryan Howes, PhD, ABPP, is a clinical psychologist in Pasadena, California, the founder of National Psychotherapy Day sponsored by GoodTherapy.org, and a writer for the Psychotherapy Networker Magazine.
Attacking another person, pointing blame, and criticizing another harshly all come from the same place: the attacker’s attempt to dislodge some of their own bad feelings onto you. By putting the focus on to you, and what they think you did wrong, they can take the focus off of themselves, and their own defects of character. But they can also put you in a one down position, elevating themselves to a position of power. And people who attempt to gain power this way — through diminishing others — do so because they do not feel powerful in their own lives, and the only reconciliation is to attempt to control others.
People who hurt others to feel better about themselves, may not know how to feel good any other way, and may also have very fragile and primitive ego structures. What this means is that their sense of self is underdeveloped and defined through their ability to control others. And what people who attack don’t have control over is their own sense of self — because attacks come from unresolved material, an unconscious need to regain power, and are justified by a perceived feeling of being wronged or hurt somewhere in their lives.
“Being attacked, blamed, and criticized puts us all on the defensive, and we may want to throw our own daggers, yet attacking back simply signifies battle. And while you may feel as if it’s wrong that you were attacked and want to correct the behavior, it is never your job to correct anyone’s behavior but your own. Instead, when someone goes on the offense after you, your focus needs to be on setting boundaries to protect yourself. This is what is meant by empathic confrontation. Empathic confrontation essentially means recognizing that bad behavior comes from a place of pain and confusion, and then setting limits. An example of this would be saying, “Look I don’t think you meant to hurt me, or that you are a bad person, but what you said did hurt, and I am not going to respond to you when you speak to me that way.” While empathic confrontation protects you, it also does something else — it calls on a person’s better character. Ultimately, the message to the person doing the attacking is: I wont let myself be treated poorly because I think you can behave better than that.”
Do some therapists cry with their patients? Does it mean he or she has poor boundaries?
Well, I certainly can’t speak for all therapists, but in my own experience there are absolutely therapists who tear up—or even openly cry—with a client. And I don’t think it speaks to poor boundaries at all, but rather to a therapist’s openness to what’s happening in the room. If you’re a psychodynamically-oriented therapist, working with a client over a long period time, you’re simply going to feel for them at times, whether in their struggles or in their joy. I don’t think it’s appropriate to breakdown and weep as a therapist, but I think tears on the therapist’s part can actually be a fairly powerful thing in the right context, and add to, rather than detract from, the therapeutic relationship.
And it turns out that, at least according to the most recent study done on the topic, 72% of therapists, regardless of gender, reported crying in session at some time in their career (crying here, again, meaning tearing up a bit, not sobbing hysterically) with “older, more experienced therapists and those with a psychodynamic approach tending to cry more”.
The article also goes onto note that:
“[therapists] reported they experienced their last in-session cry due to sadness (75%), “feeling touched” (63%), warmth (33%), gratitude (15%) and joy (12%). According to the researchers these findings challenge the idea that therapists cry "due to the therapist being overwhelmed by intense negative emotions that arise in therapy, and instead signals a moment of potentially positive emotional connection, even if amid painful negative affect.”
At the end of our lives, each of us will look back and wonder what really mattered. It won’t be busyness. It’ll be that we were able to love and be intimate with others, that we enjoyed beauty and were creative in some manner. That we lived our lives fully.
The busyness now is in pursuing some accomplishment, commodity, or recognition we think we want. We race to the end of our lives. Then at the finish line, we realize we’ve barely skimmed the surface.
The benefits of writing go far beyond building up your vocabulary.
No matter the quality of your prose, the act of writing itself leads to strong physical and mental health benefits, like long-term improvements in mood, stress levels and depressive symptoms. In a 2005 study on the emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing, researchers found that just 15 to 20 minutes of writing three to five times over the course of the four-month study was enough to make a difference.
By writing about traumatic, stressful or emotional events, participants were significantly more likely to have fewer illnesses and be less affected by trauma. Participants ultimately spent less time in the hospital, enjoyed lower blood pressure and had better liver functionality than their counterparts.
It turns out writing can make physical wounds heal faster as well. In 2013, New Zealand researchers monitored the recovery of wounds from medically necessary biopsies on 49 healthy adults. The adults wrote about their thoughts and feelings for just 20 minutes, three days in a row, two weeks before the biopsy. Eleven days later, 76% of the group that wrote had fully healed. Fifty-eight percent of the control group had not recovered. The study concluded that writing about distressing events helped participants make sense of the events and reduce distress.
Even those who suffer from specific diseases can improve their health through writing. Studies have shown that people with asthma who write have fewer attacks than those who don’t; AIDS patients who write have higher T-cell counts. Cancer patients who write have more optimistic perspectives and improved quality of life.
So what is it about writing that makes it so great for you?
James W. Pennebaker has been conducting research on writing to heal for years at the University of Texas at Austin. “When people are given the opportunity to write about emotional upheavals, they often experience improved health,” Pennebaker writes. “They go to the doctor less. They have changes in immune function."
Why? Pennebaker believes this act of expressive writing allows people to take a step back and evaluate their lives. Instead of obsessing unhealthily over an event, they can focus on moving forward. By doing so, stress levels go down and health correspondingly goes up.
You don’t have to be a serious novelist or constantly reflecting on your life’s most traumatic moments to get these great benefits. Even blogging or journaling is enough to see results. One study found that blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to the effect from running or listening to music.
From long-term health improvements to short-term benefits like sleeping better, it’s official: Writers are doing something right.
The task of therapy is not to eliminate suffering but to give a voice to it, to find a form in which it can be expressed. Expression is itself transformation; this is the message that art brings. The therapist then would be an artist of the soul, working with sufferers to enable them to find the proper container for their pain, the form in which it would be embodied.
by Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D.
If you’ve been depressed or anxious for a while, it can be hard to recognize when you are actually getting better. Here are few signs that you are probably on the mend:
You start forgetting to take your medication. (This is not a recommendation). When you begin to feel better, you naturally gravitate away from your prescriptions. If you find yourself forgetting more than just a few times, you need to consult with your physician. It may be time to change your dose or to start tapering off. Never quit a medication without notifying your doctor and therapist.
You find yourself singing along with the car radio. Most of the time depressed people don’t rock out in their cars. When you catch yourself on the freeway pretending you are Pink or Adam Lambert, it could be a sign that you are feeling some happiness. Just notice it and take it in.
Things that used to scare you don’t anymore. You may find yourself driving to places that you were too overwhelmed to visit before. You could be thinking about asking for a promotion or a raise or about looking for a new job. And you may also find yourself standing up to people who may have intimidated you in the past. These are all signs of inner strength.
You are ready to make some big changes to your living situation. You may want to move or to remodel the house. It may be that you associate your surroundings with when you were feeling bad, so wanting to change them is a way of telling yourself that you are ready to feel good again. I would try moving some furniture around or taking a trip, however, before putting the house on the market.
You are able to take your disappointments in stride. Incidents that would have upset you before and caused you to go into a tailspin feel like only minor inconveniences now. This is a great way to know that you are healing from within. Whenever you can take disappointment in stride, you are robbing your negative emotions of their power, which allows you to put your emotional energy to better use.
You understand that bad days are only temporary. We all have bad days, but for someone who has been battling a mood disorder, they can be worrisome, because the question of a relapse is never far away. Neither is the knowledge that you are coming out of this difficult place, despite momentary setbacks.
You have more moments of peace and you are sleeping better. Both are signs that your mood is on the mend. You may not recognize those peaceful moments right away, but if you are used to waking up with anxiety and you are doing this less often, you are moving in the right direction.
Attacking another person, pointing blame, and criticizing another harshly all come from the same place: the attacker’s attempt to dislodge some of their own bad feelings onto you. By putting the focus on to you, and what they think you did wrong, they can take the focus off of themselves, and their own defects of character. But they can also put you in a one down position, elevating themselves to a position of power. And people who attempt to gain power this way — through diminishing others — do so because they do not feel powerful in their own lives, and the only reconciliation is to attempt to control others.
People who hurt others to feel better about themselves, may not know how to feel good any other way, and may also have very fragile and primitive ego structures. What this means is that their sense of self is underdeveloped and defined through their ability to control others. And what people who attack don’t have control over is their own sense of self — because attacks come from unresolved material, an unconscious need to regain power, and are justified by a perceived feeling of being wronged or hurt somewhere in their lives.
“Being attacked, blamed, and criticized puts us all on the defensive, and we may want to throw our own daggers, yet attacking back simply signifies battle. And while you may feel as if it’s wrong that you were attacked and want to correct the behavior, it is never your job to correct anyone’s behavior but your own. Instead, when someone goes on the offense after you, your focus needs to be on setting boundaries to protect yourself. This is what is meant by empathic confrontation. Empathic confrontation essentially means recognizing that bad behavior comes from a place of pain and confusion, and then setting limits. An example of this would be saying, “Look I don’t think you meant to hurt me, or that you are a bad person, but what you said did hurt, and I am not going to respond to you when you speak to me that way.” While empathic confrontation protects you, it also does something else — it calls on a person’s better character. Ultimately, the message to the person doing the attacking is: I wont let myself be treated poorly because I think you can behave better than that.”
“In my psychology practice, I have found that many, if not most clients are very uncomfortable with the notion that their parents had such a powerful effect on them. Perhaps acknowledging the incredible power of parents is inherently threatening to us all. If we understand the true impact that our parents had on us, we may feel ourselves alone, disempowered, or even victimized, all of which are profoundly uncomfortable. If we understand the true impact that we have, as parents, upon our own children, we may feel terrified or guilty. So, as a people, we lean more toward blaming ourselves for our own issues, and underplaying the impact which we have on our children.
As a psychologist, a parent and a daughter, I truly understand this discomfort on multiple levels. The concept of blame weighs heavily upon us all. If we blame our parents, then perhaps we will feel less burden of blame upon ourselves. But is this a way of letting ourselves off the hook for taking responsibility for our own choices and behavior? And won’t we then have to feel guilty, and take the blame for how we have parented our own children? It is a Win/Lose situation at best; and a Lose/Lose situation at worst.
So what is the answer? Who is to blame for our adult struggles? Who is to blame for our own mistakes and problems? Do our parents get a free pass? What if our parents were well-meaning? What if we have made mistakes with our own children? Who is to blame for that? What is the answer?
Fortunately, there is an answer to this dilemma. And it is free and available to anyone who is willing to embrace it. The answer is:
Remove blame from the equation. Instead, focus upon understanding your parents’ effects upon you and taking accountability for your own decisions, mistakes and choices.
Blame is actually quite a useless concept. It is a road that takes you directly to The Intersection of Burden and Guilt. Blame is not healing and it is not helpful.
However, it is worthwhile to try to understand how your childhood affects you. Understanding is a road to somewhere good: The Corner of Growth and Change. Understanding how your parents failed you, how they mistreated you, ignored you, or simply made mistakes when raising you, will help you understand why you have the struggles and issues that you have. Understanding is crucial to being able to have compassion for yourself as a child and as an adult, and to conquering those issues and struggles. You can have an understanding of how your parents’ mistakes affected or hurt you without going down that Blame Road to Nowhere.
Once you understand how your childhood affected you, you are freed up to hold yourself accountable as an adult. You, the adult, are responsible for your own decisions, mistakes, and choices. Own them. Be accountable for them. Learn from them, and move forward. No blame or guilt necessary.
I think that we would all be much healthier and happier if we would let go of this obsession with blame, realize that yes, each and every human being has a childhood living within him which has a profound effect upon who he is as an adult. Understanding your childhood does not absolve you of responsibility for your adult life. Instead, it frees you up to take responsibility for your adult life.”
Since 2011, I’ve been interviewing therapists from all over the country about their work and life. In this series, “Clinicians on the Couch,” I always ask the same 10 questions. One of those questions examines the biggest myth about therapy. Below is a selection of these responses. Some of the myths overlap. But I think the words are powerful, because, again, myths stop people from seeking much-needed support.
Myth: Therapy is just a pricey way to get a person to listen to you.
Fact: “Well, it is true that you’re paying for someone to listen, but a psychotherapist’s skills go beyond that of ordinary listening. When you’re in therapy, you’re working with an Olympic medal listener. People don’t realize that so much goes into becoming a psychologist — years of theoretical, practical and scientific training and hundreds of hours of clinical experiences.
“As a client, you’re not just sitting and schmoozing in a therapy session. There’s a lot of specific, active work going on. That, combined with your therapist’s clinical objectivity, enables a client to get a balanced, unbiased frame of reference in treatment that cannot be compared to the listening of a friend or family member.” – Deborah Serani, PsyD.
Myth: Therapy is only for people who are in crisis.
Fact: “I find that therapy is often least effective during times of crisis, as therapists can only serve as crisis managers. I far prefer someone come into therapy seeking change outside the specter of crisis.” – John Duffy, Ph.D.
“While therapy definitely needs to address potential psychological disturbances and life problems, the goal of therapy need not be merely the absence of distress. Therapy can help you recognize and develop your strengths and creativity. After all, even professional athletes who are already exceptional in their field have coaches and physical trainers to point out slight or major adjustments the athlete can make and help him or her achieve their potential. It can be the same with therapy — often people want to go from ‘good’ to ‘great.‘” – Rachel Fintzy, M.A., MFT.
Myth: Therapy is about talking.
Fact: “…Therapy is so much more than this. It is an evidence-based science and a craft that requires a great deal of skill and creativity. Therapy is a process that involves learning to change one’s subjective experiences (thoughts, feelings, behaviors) through skills acquisition, insight, and the generation of new mastery experiences, which lead to a positive shift in one’s perception and is reflected in their more adaptive functioning.” – Marla W. Deibler, PsyD.
Myth: Going to therapy means there’s something wrong with you.
Fact: “I have heard this over and over again, and it’s just not true. Attending therapy means that, like every other human on the planet, you have come up against challenges in life, and you could use some support from a safe, supportive, impartial person. That’s all it means.” – Carla Naumburg, Ph.D.
“Going to therapy means you are interested in understanding yourself and your automatic habits so that you have more opportunities to live a purposeful and satisfying life.” – Ashley Eder, LPC.
Myth: Therapy is for crazy people.
Fact: “I hear this myth both with new clients as well as outside the office with acquaintances, and I suspect it is the main reason why a lot of people use therapy as a last resort, long after the problem they’ve been dealing with has amplified.
“The origins of this myth whether social (transmitted from generation to generation) or from media portray the therapy goer as someone out of touch with reality or psychotic. In reality, therapy is effective and helpful not only for people who struggle with severe clinical issues, but anyone who feels stuck or needs a change in perspective.” – Diana Pitaru, MS, LPC.
“Going to therapy offers a better understanding about yourself and learning better opportunities to live a healthier life. If a person goes to their primary care physician for medications to help them fight off the flu or virus, are they considered crazy? Going to therapy shows that you are looking for better opportunities to resolve certain issues that are troubling you.” – Helen Nieves, LMHC.
“The truth is, all of us are human and each of us goes through a very personal journey in life that is full of both joy and pain.” – Clair Mellenthin, LCSW.
Myth: The therapist is going to fix you.
Fact: “That’s not it at all. Therapy is a partnership, and when both parties do their part, change is the result. The therapist offers insights, suggestions, and tools, and the client implements them in his or her life. That’s what therapy is all about.” – Christina G. Hibbert, Psy.D.
“The biggest myth about therapy is that the therapist has the answers. The curative factor in therapy is not the therapist, it is the mutuality between the patient and therapist and the journey they share. I have been teaching doctoral students in clinical psychology for over 25 years and I always remind these wonderful and passionate young professionals that they will never know more about the patient, than the patient.
“What they offer is their clinical training to see and hear what the patient knows but cannot yet access because of history, pain, fear, addiction, trauma, etc. No matter what type of therapy, it is the collaboration between therapist and patient that makes change and healing possible.” – Suzanne B. Phillips, PsyD.
Myth: Therapy is supposed to help you feel happy all the time.
Fact: “To me, that’s impossible. My goal is to help people deal with the painful feelings that accompany many of life’s circumstances and help them see that they don’t need to be afraid of certain difficult feelings.” – Jennifer Kromberg, PsyD.
“… I find the idea of everlasting happiness to be a very unfortunate myth in our general American culture. That’s one of the reasons why I love both ACT and Oliver Burkeman’s book [The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking]: They are both well-grounded in the reality that we are always going to face struggles, negative thoughts, painful feelings and a whole host of other uncomfortable things in life due to the simple fact that we’re human.
“It’s how we respond to these things that matters, not trying to get rid of them so we can be constantly happy. In the interest of full disclosure: I am a bit of a happiness grump. I once wrote an article for my blog, ‘Bounce,’ entitled ‘Happiness Irritates Me.’ ;-)” – Bobbi Emel, MFT.
Myth: Real change and progress will be sudden and striking.
Fact: “People naturally seek ‘aha’ moments and can fail to see the gradual progress they are making. In my experience, the most important, lasting and meaningful changes happen bit-by-bit, step-by-step, not all at once.” – Jonice Webb, Ph.D.
Myth: Therapy is needless. You can just vent to a friend.
Fact: “I’ve heard people say that if they need to talk or vent, why should they go to a therapist? Can’t they just go to a friend? Two issues with this: 1) not everyone has a close friend to go to; and 2) while venting is fully welcome and can be part of therapy, therapy is for more than just venting. Venting can be useful to temporarily relieve stress (and venting can actually increase stress, if not careful), but at some point, a person in therapy will have to look into themselves and their own cognitive and emotional processes.
“The process that makes therapy effective isn’t as likely to happen effectively with a friend (even if the friend is a therapist). Therapy isn’t only talk and conversation, nor is it advice-giving (another myth).
“Therapy involves a dynamic relationship in its own right, which a personal history conflicts with. That’s why it is unethical for therapists to work with their friends. Therapy is most effective when entered pure — without personal history. Therefore, while it’s nice to be able to vent to friends, if you’re looking for an effective therapy experience, this is much more likely to happen with a therapist than when talking to a friend.” – Nathan Feiles, LCSW.
Myth: Therapy has an end goal.
Fact: “I don’t mean that people need to be in therapy for an indefinite time, but there’s a faulty notion of achieving some end state. This focus makes therapy more difficult as the mind is cluttered with an expectation instead of focusing on learning.
“Even if insurance only covers 10 sessions and wants to hear the end goal, we have to always keep in mind that therapy is a vehicle for learning, and while we can begin to master certain ways of being, growing and learning about ourselves in life never ends.” – Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.
Myth: Therapy is about blaming your parents.
Fact: “I find that a frequent concern that people have coming in is that therapy will somehow find fault with their parents and create a rift. The idea is that if you look too closely at your past, it could bring up things better left unexamined and hurt your family. But I find on the contrary that therapy is often about the present moment, and that it often increases our tenderness for our parents.” – Elizabeth Sullivan, MFT.
Myth: Going to therapy means you’re weak.
Fact: “… Life is hard. It just is, and that means that sometimes we need support. Talking with a therapist or taking medication does not make you weak. Would you consider someone who has a broken leg wearing a cast to be weak? If that person engages in physical therapy does he or she deserve our harsh judgment and stigmatization? Should we shame people for having asthma and needing to use an inhaler? Of course not. Wounds can be physical, mental, and emotional. Those of us who need to heal deserve to seek the help we need without feeling ashamed for doing so.” – Casey Radle, M.Ed., LPC.
“Asking for help and committing to one’s own therapy process takes courage for many clients. Each time a new potential client reaches out and connects with me, I am struck by their ability to bravely step into vulnerability by asking for help and support. This feels especially big to me because clients usually feel anything but courage when it comes to asking for help. As a therapist, I am continually honored to be able to accompany clients on their brave journey to understand and work through their strengths, struggles, and story.” – Amy Tatsumi, MA, LPC.
Myth: Therapy isn’t fun.
Fact: “I find therapy fun because we are often able to laugh at ourselves, increase our perspective and gratitude, and see the absurdity in this life.” – Elizabeth Sullivan, MFT.
Therapy can help individuals with a variety of conditions and concerns. The earlier you go, the sooner you can start healing or getting better. And remember that seeking support is a strong, courageous act. This piece has insight into finding the right clinician for you.
