Attending to your Mental Health
Most people will experience a period of poor or neglected mental health at some point in their life, and others may live a large portion of their life coping with these struggles. There are many resources out there for support, whether it be in the private or the public sector, but often people feel stuck or lost with where to start to look for help.
In order to improve our mental health and to grow and change, we first must be aware of how we are feeling and what we are experiencing. Self-reflection and journaling are two very helpful tools to accomplish this. Next, we must advocate for ourselves to receive the care that we all deserve. This might look like meeting with different therapists to find one that best suits you and your personal needs; this is one of the most determining factors in therapy success is having a positive and comfortable therapeutic relationship between the client and practitioner. In other instances, advocacy for ourselves may look like doctor’s visits, hospital visits, and inpatient programming.
Regardless of what is happening for you mentally or emotionally, there is help and support available to you. Having a therapist that you can trust and are comfortable with will provide you with additional support and advocacy that one may require. Taking the first step to ask for help can be a difficult one, but it is one that is necessary in order to better ourselves and our mental and emotional health. Said best by Abraham Maslow, “In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety”. Growth and change are not comfortable, but they are necessary in order to move forward and improve one’s self, especially in the case of mental and emotional health.
Kaitlyn Barnett, MACP is a Registered Provisional Psychologist with the College of Alberta Psychologists and specializes in the areas of relationship and family concerns, as well as many others. For more information on Kaitlyn and her work, click here to link to her full bio page.