Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you came across this video today because if you're looking at the potential benefits for therapy, then that means you're contemplating therapy. At least I hope you are. I'm a PhD student in clinical psychology and I see clients for therapy under the supervision of a licensed psychologist. And with that being said, I'm really excited about therapy. I love talking about therapy and I personally believe that it is for everyone. So in this video, I'm going to review the potential benefits and I hope that they're helpful to you. Welcome to Grad Life Grind. If you're new to this channel, thank you for checking it out. And if you're already a subscriber, thanks for being back again. My name is Arielle and I'm a PhD student in clinical psychology. And in this channel, I bring you information about the mental health field and talk about my journey as a PhD student. One possible benefit to therapy is learning new ways to cope with stress. And that doesn't mean that you don't know how to cope or that you aren't doing well on your own. What it means is that a therapist can help you troubleshoot some of the coping strategies that you've been using that may not be working for you anymore, for whatever the reason. And a therapist may also be able to offer alternative ways of coping that you may not have thought of, that you may not have tried before. And we all need different ways to cope. We all need to be able to adapt to different situations and adapt our coping strategies accordingly. And I think especially during a time like this, when we're in a global pandemic, we may need to rework the ways that we cope because things aren't always going to work the way that they used to. As we live through different life experiences, we need to change and we need to make changes in our environment, in our inner thoughts, in our behaviors. And a therapist can help you do that. Another potential benefit of psychotherapy is increasing self-awareness. And this is one of my favorites because I feel like when you know yourself, you can know so much more about other people and about how to relate in the world. You can increase empathy for others when you increase your kind of self-compassion and empathy for yourself. So learning through therapy about yourself, learning how to identify some of the patterns in your thoughts, patterns in your behaviors, learning why you may be the way that you are, learning about the different influences in your childhood or in your life that have contributed to how you think and how you behave is really a cool benefit to therapy. So a therapist is there really to co-create with you a space for healing, a space to learn about yourself in an accepting and discovery and a self-discovery type of way. So your therapist may be able to point out patterns that you may not have noticed before or point out inconsistencies. For example, if you said this but then a few sessions later you said that, they can kind of point those things out to you in a non-judgmental and in a loving way so that you can learn more about yourself. And I really believe that when you learn more about yourself it has an influence on everything that you do and you can start to create changes for the better that you may want to do. The better you know yourself, the better able you are to implement the changes in your life that you want to implement. Another potential benefit or outcome of therapy is that you may be able to improve your relationships with others. And like I said about the last benefit, in therapy you learn about yourself and the more you know yourself the more you can show up in your relationships in a positive way and that's kind of an indirect benefit that may come from therapy. However, improving your relationships can also be a direct benefit of therapy because there are specific types of therapy that focus on relationships. For example, if you go to couples therapy you're going to learn about communication and conflict strategies and it's really designed to help you improve your relationships. So whether directly or indirectly, therapy can help improve your relationships and I think we all want more satisfying and fulfilling relationships in our lives. An additional benefit of therapy is that you may be able to foster self-acceptance and self-love through therapy and therapy itself is a form of self-care. I think it's a practice of self-love, giving yourself the time on a weekly basis or a bi-weekly basis to to dedicate to yourself, to dedicate to processing your emotions and it is definitely investment in yourself. And I think that there's something really beautiful about about giving yourself that space, about allowing yourself to feel your feelings and spend time with a person being a therapist who is going to help you facilitate that healing. So I really believe that therapy is one form of self-care and self-love that can kind of snowball into other areas. Through therapy you may learn other ways that you can take care of yourself, you may be able to see different ways that you have been hard on yourself or ways that you could really benefit from accepting parts of yourself and learn or start the journey of fully accepting who you are and fully loving everything about yourself, even the things that may be difficult. So I really think that that's one awesome benefit of therapy is you're loving yourself through therapy and then that kind of incites another process of self-love and self-discovery. So I think that's a great benefit. Lastly, as I've alluded to, one potential benefit of therapy is just being able to process difficult events, emotions, or experiences with a licensed professional. So there are things like grief and loss and big changes or transitions like divorces that are really really hard to go through by yourself. And even though you may have a great support system, you may have friends and family who are there for you, some of these things can be really challenging to to process and experience without the help of a professional. And this doesn't mean that you can't do this stuff alone, it just means that it's hard to do alone. And a therapist can be there to help you process these events in a healthy way, help you to increase or change up your coping strategy so that you can cope with this, and hopefully a therapist can also help you turn painful experiences or painful periods in your life into opportunities for growth. So these are some potential benefits to therapy. I know that this is not an all-encompassing list, there may be benefits outside of what I mentioned, but I think that it's important to note that it would be incomplete of me to mention only the benefits of therapy and not the potential problems with therapy or the field of psychology. So as much as there can be these benefits to therapy, we need to also be clear about the fact that access to therapy is a huge social issue. Therapy is also really expensive and so not everyone can afford it. And I also want to be clear, even though I'm part of the field of psychology, even though I'm getting a PhD in clinical psychology, I need to be able to acknowledge with a critical lens the field and the system that I'm part of. And historically speaking, the field of psychology, the field of psychiatry, have marginalized and really harmed certain groups of people. And that is a generational issue that is something that has resulted in trauma for certain groups. There are people who have had really negative experiences with mental health professionals, and I don't want to ignore that by only talking about the benefits. So as much as I love the idea of therapy and I love that people can heal or people can learn about themselves and experience these benefits that I mentioned, I also want to make sure that I'm providing the full picture. Therapy may not be for everyone, even though I would like it to be. And therapy is definitely not accessible to everyone as much as I believe that it should be. And I feel like I cannot speak to the benefits without also speaking to the problems of the field. And there are many problems of the field. And of course, I hope that as a PhD student, as a Latinx person, that I can increase representation of people of color within the field of psychology. But we have a long, long, long way to go. And I'm only one person. So me choosing as a Latinx woman to become a psychologist does not solve the problem of therapy being affordable. It does not solve the problem that there aren't enough therapists from diverse backgrounds to serve all the people who deserve therapy. So I just wanted to be clear about that. I know that I spoke to the benefits or the potential benefits that you may glean from therapy. I also want to make sure that, you know, I'm not ignoring all the things that need to improve. So I really hope that this video was helpful for you. And I hope that you will comment about one of these benefits, something that surprised you, something that impacted you, something that you have experienced through therapy. I hope that if you have been in therapy, you've experienced one of these benefits. And if you're thinking about going to therapy, I hope that these benefits positively impact your decision. In the description for this video, I will be linking to some resources to help you find a therapist if that's something that you are interested in. And I will also link to a previous video I did about how to find a good therapist. So thank you for 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. I hope that you'll connect with me on Instagram at gradlifegrind. And I hope that you'll subscribe to my channel and check out my next video.