Speaker 1: Welcome to Grad Life Grind. My name is Arielle and I'm a PhD student in clinical psychology and in this channel I talk about my life as a grad student and bring you information about the mental health field. So right now I'm a rising second year in my PhD program and it feels really good to say that. One of the biggest changes that I've experienced in the past few weeks is that I've started doing clinical work and what that means is that I've started to see clients for therapy. So I definitely need to do a video about what it's been like starting my first therapy experience during COVID-19 because it's been 100% telehealth. So at some point I'll do a video about what it's been like for me as a telehealth student therapist but for now I want to address some of the common myths and misconceptions about therapy. So the first misconception slash myth about therapy is that it's for crazy people or psychopaths and there's some really big problems with the fact that we use the words crazy and psycho so casually and that's probably something for another video. And if you're interested in psychology or you're getting a PhD in psychology or a master's or you want to work in the mental health field people are like oh you want to work with the crazy people or wow like you want to work with the crazies or you're going to be a shrink and using these terms actually stigmatizes therapy more than it already is. So part of the reason why people don't seek therapy is because they have this idea that it's for people who are crazy, they don't want to associate themselves with crazy and therefore they don't get the help that they may need or it would be really useful for them. So the fact that therapy is for crazy people is one of the number one things that I want to have you erase from your memory. So that's actually not true. Therapy is not for crazy people. Therapy is for all people. Therapy is for you. Therapy is for your mom or your dad or any other caregiver. Therapy is for your siblings and your friends. Therapy is for your partner, your husband, your wife or your spouse. Therapy is for your children. Therapy is for your grandma and your grandpa and anyone else that you know. Therapy is for everybody. But we need to stop using language like therapy is for crazy people or I'm not crazy why should I go to therapy because one of the most damaging beliefs that we have about therapy is that it's reserved for a subset of the population that's mentally inferior to the rest of us. And while some people may struggle with mental illness, there's a huge issue with the label of crazy. But more importantly, therapy is, like I said, for anyone and everyone. That leads me to the second misconception which is that therapy is a last resort and your problems have to be gigantic for you to consider something so drastic as therapy. And the reason why I believe that that's a misconception is because not only is therapy for everyone, it's for anything and everything. So people go to therapy for a number of reasons like they're going through a life transition such as a divorce, having a baby for the first time, entering into a new relationship, leaving a relationship, starting school, changing careers. There are a huge range of reasons why people seek therapy and they're not just situations where you can't function or control your emotions and I think that the media has a really big role in the way that we view mental illness, mental health, and mental health services. So therapy is not just for situations where it's a last resort and you don't know what else to do. Now that's one of the reasons why people choose to get therapy, they've tried other things and they don't know what else to do and so they've just decided finally I'll try therapy. That's great. In my opinion, whatever it takes to lead you to therapy, cool, but I think we need to do away with the belief that things aren't that bad for me, therefore I shouldn't go to therapy. Because we need to start looking at mental health as equivalent to physical health. Right now is the perfect time to make this analogy. If you start getting like a little bit of a dry cough and a little bit of a headache, which are the very first symptoms of what could be COVID-19, so if you start feeling those symptoms, you don't decide to just like, let's see what happens, I'm not that sick, I won't get tested. Right now, if those kind of starter symptoms come up, we go to the doctor, we get the COVID test, we quarantine ourselves, we take all these precautions for the health of ourselves and for the health of others. And the same is true for mental health. So you don't have to be at like the brink of disaster just to get therapy. You can start therapy if you're just feeling a little bit off, or you feel like you're going to be going through something stressful soon and you want support. Or if you can foresee that you're feeling different than you normally do. But I do believe that the idea that therapy is a last resort emergency treatment is really problematic and I hope that the perspective that I'm providing today will change your mind if you're somebody who believes that. So another misconception that is especially relevant right now during an all-time high of racial tensions in this country is the idea that therapy is only for white people or European-Americans. So again, like the first and second misconception or myth about therapy, the reason why this one is problematic is because therapy is for everyone. And I think this one hits home for me because part of the reason why I'm in the field of psychology is because I think it's really important to increase the representation of people from diverse backgrounds in psychology because research shows that when there is ethnic match between therapist and client, the outcomes are better. And I've said in a bunch of my videos that I'm from a Latinx background and I think it's super, super important for Latinx people who are seeking therapy to have the option of having a therapist who looks like them, knows their language, whether that's Spanish or any other language, understands their culture and their practices. If you are a non-white individual, then you know that having someone to talk to where you don't have to explain your entire identity is really, really important, especially in the therapeutic setting and a lot of research also suggests that what is very healing about therapy is the therapeutic relationship. And if you have cultural similarities, then the probability of the relationship being stronger I believe is higher. So being a Latinx woman in this field and being someone who believes in the importance of diversity in psychology, I think that this misconception is extremely problematic because it minimizes the importance of mental health in non-white communities. So when you say therapy is for white people, no matter what your background is, you're saying that non-white people's problems are not important enough to get therapy, to get help and I completely disagree with that idea and I think everyone's problems, everyone's symptoms, everyone's experiences are worth being heard. I think everyone, no matter what they look like, sound like, do for a living, is entitled to or deserves someone to understand them and to hear them out and everyone deserves a safe space and that's what therapy is. In a lot of communities of color, there is that kind of myth of like, oh, I'm not going to go to therapy, that's just for white people and I understand why that is, it really comes from a place of only white people have those resources or only white people have that kind of time and all these generalizations that, you know, blanket statements that people make. So I can definitely see where that idea comes from because I think that speaking just from the Latinx community, there is the idea that white people are better resourced than non-white people and it's expensive to go to therapy, it means you're talking to someone that you don't know, it means that you are sharing things that you probably wouldn't share with a stranger or maybe you haven't even shared with your loved ones. So there is this kind of wall that a lot of communities of color put up against therapy and so it's easy to just say it's for white people, not for me, instead of actually going and doing the work because newsflash, therapy is really hard, being the client is really hard, being the therapist is also really hard. So I just want to kind of unpack therapy is for white people because I think that even though it can be a defense or like a protective thing that people say, it is also like invalidating your own pain and other people's pain if they're non-white. So those are three myths or misconceptions about therapy that I wanted to cover for you guys today and there are so many more. So if you want to see a part two of this video, let me know in the comments and I will do one. Like I said at the beginning of this video, part of my mission with this channel is to bring you guys information about the mental health field and that means information about you know, data and research and what's going on in the field but that also means what mental health looks like from the outside perspective or from the media's perspective and why I think mental health should matter to everyone. So it's super important for me to point out the things that I keep hearing when I know that they're inherently wrong. For example, therapy is for X person or therapy is only for this situation. As I've said and I will continue to say over and over again, therapy is for everyone and therapy can be for anything and I know that there are challenges associated with seeking therapy in terms of finding someone, being able to afford therapy, there are so many challenges that unfortunately exist in this country related to mental health but if you're watching this, I want you to know that I think that you deserve the help that you need, the support that you need, and a safe space to get through all the challenges that life has. So like I said, if you want me to unpack more myths and misconceptions about therapy, if you have any questions about therapy, what it means in general or what it means to me, let me know in the comments. So I really appreciate you watching this video. Again, my name is Arielle. My goal is to inform you, to inspire you, to spark an interest in you and hopefully also entertain you. Thank you for checking out Grad Life Grind and I hope you'll be back soon.