How does therapy help mental health issues or mental illness?

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How does talking to a professional about your problems help you in any way? I’ve been in and out of therapy for years and I simply don’t find any use in it. I just tell the therapist about my emotions and my life, they try to be understanding and offer some very basic advice I already knew about. Why is therapy often recommended more than medication and thought of as a better solution when it’s literally just normal discussion that can’t change brain chemistry?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Because mental health issues are sometimes biological in nature and sometimes more disordered or maladaptive thought patterns.

By changing your behavior, you can these thought patterns sometimes.

This is literally what cognitive behavioral therapy is.

So for depression, one thing that maintains it is perception. You tend to notice and remember the negative things more than the positive things. So a behavioral technique to combat that is a gratitude journal. Write down 3 things that you are grateful for every day, no matter how small. In doing so, you force yourself to acknowledge the positive things and as you practice, you notice that more and more and then your perception shifts from wearing “shit coloured glasses” to more normal ones.

Ergo, behavioural change leads to cognitive change, that is therapeutic.

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