Author: Kara

Do Psychologists Go to Therapy?

Kara Mental Health , 0 Comment
Do Psychologists Go to Therapy?

Each and one of us go through emotional struggles, as this is part of life. Evidently, this doesn’t exclude psychologists, who have their share of challenges they have to surpass. As a matter of fact, official information points that physicians are the demographic sector with the highest suicide rates. The rate of suicidal thoughts among psychologist, in particular, is rather alarming – 42 percent of psychologists having experienced suicidal behavior or intention. But why is that?

The Struggles Psychologists Go Through

The very nature of a psychologist’s work exposes him/her to the darkest side of people’s minds. When it comes to burnouts, in particular, psychologists are more inclined to place other people’s needs above their own. More about topic you can read in the why be moral essay.

Therefore, a psychologist must learn how to control his/her emotions regarding traumatic incidents, when discussing with clients about traumas and strong emotions. In addition to that, psychologists have a higher level of sensitivity to people and their environment. Concurrently, psychologists are predisposed to isolate themselves, especially when struggling emotionally.

What is more, the lack of therapeutic success, and the great demands of administrative duties linked to their work can notably contribute to burnout.

Depression is, of course, another triggering factor. The greater majority of psychologists experience symptoms of depression, having the tendency of withdrawing themselves from colleagues and the society. On a different note, there is also the risk of vicarious traumatization, countertransference and compassion fatigue – which are phenomena that affect the health practitioner’s affective, behavioral and cognitive response to clients.

Do Psychologists Seek Mental Help?

In spite of these realities, many psychologists are still resistant to seeking mental help. The main motives worth mentioning include social stigma, fear of emotion, fear of treatment, and self-disclosure. While we could argue that these impediments exist for almost everyone, it would appear that psychologists are mostly influenced by them.

Essentially, the stigma of seeking therapy is a fearful concept for most therapists, considering that family members, friends and even clients could convey them differently. In addition to that, seeking therapy might make certain people question a psychologist’s capabilities as a professional.

In spite of all these obstacles, do psychologists go to therapy? The answer is yes.

Self-Care Is of Utmost Importance

We are all humans – regardless of our chosen profession. Psychologists sit for hours and hours, listening to other people’s problems and traumas, helping them comprehend and deepen their understanding of their own selves, and giving them the resources they need to heal themselves. To be frank, though, psychologists aren’t trained regarding self-care.

Whilst going through emotional struggles, you are expected to be an ethical and efficient therapist, and help your clients thrive. One of the reasons why self-care is even more critical for therapists is that we ought to provide a healthy self to patients. It could be safe to say that safe-care is paramount for maintaining your competence as a psychologist.

Therefore, because I believe self-care is of utmost importance, taking counseling sessions is highly recommended. During counseling someone, you ought to get into their own shoes, you have to carry their most emotional and traumatic struggles in order to truly comprehend them. After a range of intense sessions, we have to detox ourselves, mentally speaking.

Even if, as psychologists, we are fully aware of the damages and emotional struggles we go through with every mental session, there is always the risk of projecting these negative feelings onto patients. Essentially, self-knowledge will help you deter entering this trap. Nevertheless, it is not enough – which is why it’s quintessential for psychologists to seek mental health support.

Compassion Fatigue – An Immense Challenge

What does the term compassion fatigue entail? It goes without saying that psychology is a rewarding profession, but the challenges are noteworthy, as we’ve pointed beforehand. When working with clients that have abuse and trauma history, you could greatly benefit from talking with a professional you can trust. In this way, you can cope with that traumatization, without letting you grow onto you.

If you don’t get it out, this could further impair your capability – as a psychologist, to continue doing that work in an efficient manner. Additionally, I believe that going to therapy is important for assessing our self-care strategies, and pinpointing our innate vulnerabilities to addiction or burnout.

Therapy gives you access to unconditional positive regard, compassion, and assistance in learning how to cope with negative emotions. Knowing all these in theory is good, but therapy grants you palpable compassion and assistance.

In summary, going to therapy shouldn’t be frowned upon – whether you are a mental professional or not. This is my viewpoint of the topic. Going to therapy gives you a chance to open up and to reveal your deepest thoughts and struggles. And sometimes, it is good to ask for help, as even psychologists, with all the preparation they go through, need to look after themselves in order to be capable of helping others.

Music Therapy

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Music Therapy

Music Therapy

Introduction

By description, Music Therapy is the utilization of music and all the music facets like emotions, physicality, aesthetics, mentality, and the spirituality in helping the patients of the improvement of their overall health (Summer & Nolan, 2001). The therapy supports a variety of patients from those going through social isolation and withdrawal, emotional problems, poor motor skills, and it helps improve the overall quality of life. Importantly, Music Therapy is employed in hospitals, schools, correctional facilities, hospices, nursing homes, and centers for cancer. This type of expressive art therapy that tends to use music in both maintaining and improving the physical, social, and the psychological well-being of an individual involves a wide range of activities. For instance, it consists of listening to music, playing musical instruments, and even singing.  

             Music has been in use as a therapeutic tool for centuries with the realization that it affects many areas of the brain, which include the regions that are involved in cognition, emotion, movement, and sensation (Aigen, 2015). This ability of music when combined with its engaging nature and the diversity of its forms make it efficient, when used in the treatment of a wide array of physical and mental problems like the anxiety, hypertension, and depression. Uniquely, the Music Therapy elicits responses from a patient that may not be attained in the other forms of treatment. Necessarily, there are no backgrounds in music that are required for the therapy to work for an individual thus making it possible to use the approach for any patient suffering from any disease or condition including dementia, insomnia, personality issues, schizophrenia, mood-related conditions and even autism. 

            Music Therapy both assesses and enhances social, cognitive, emotional, and motor functioning, this helps individuals who have brain injuries, physical or intellectual difficulties or Alzheimer’s. Consequently, the therapy has been associated with self-concept, self-esteem, prosocial behavior, verbal communication, socialization skills, coping skills, and group cohesion (Dimaio, 2010). Besides, it is helpful for mothers experiencing labor pain in the reduction of pain perception and stress levels. The therapy approach employment technique is either active or receptive. The active technique is used when an individual makes music, sings, chants play musical instruments, composes or improvises music. On the flip side, the receptive technique comes into play when an individual listens and responds to music like by dancing or doing the analysis of the lyrics. Most of the time, there is a combination of both active and receptive techniques during treatments and are used as the starting points of the discussions about values, feelings, and goals.  

            The therapy can be conducted either with an individual or a group of people, and the music may be chosen by the therapist or the one in the treatment. The therapist ensures the appropriateness of the mode and type of the selected form of music about meeting the needs and goals of the patient in therapy (Summer & Nolan, 2001). During their selection of music, the therapist employs the Iso principle which posits that a chosen music is likely to have influence if it matches the person’s current situation. Therefore, the therapy is useful when the melody and lyrics of the piece of music that is selected match the moods and psychological state of the one in the treatment. Songwriting in the therapy involves either writing an original song or the modification of the ones that already exist. However, in the cases where songs are composed freely, a provision of emotion or topic that serves as a starting point is made by the therapist. 

            There are three principal domains of the Music Therapy that include the rehabilitative approaches, the relational approaches, and music listening. Relational approaches are the psychological models that involve the active and receptive techniques. The two techniques allow the therapist and the patient to interact directly hence building a musical relationship. Besides, the techniques induce psychological effects that are beneficial to the patient since they evoke and even process the thoughts and emotions. On the other hand, rehabilitative approaches like the Neurologic Music Therapy are neuroscientific models (Aigen, 2015). They primarily use the music stimuli potentiality to activate the production and perception areas in the human brain, cognitive, provision of a series of therapeutic applications to sensory, and the motor dysfunctions that result from the neurological disorders. Some of the examples of its use are in the improvement of gait and movement in post-stroke and personality disorder patients and also language in people with aphasia. The third approach to music listening requires no therapist and involves the induction of the patient by the content of musical stimuli and by listening.

            Some of the explanations of how Music Therapy is essential to include the increase in responsiveness to antidepressant medications by the depressed. For the sad adult women, the treatment leads to the reduction of their heart rates, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and the depressed mood. In the infants, soothing music helps attain more relaxation and less agitation; they may increase feeding rates, improve their tolerance to stimulation and increase weight gain. Also, the therapy decreases the risk of brain and heart diseases in the elderly dementia patients, reduce the agitated and aggressive behavior, improve corporation in their daily tasks, and reduce the dementia symptoms (Dimaio, 2010). Further, it aids in the teaching of the verbal and nonverbal skills of communication and the establishment of a standard developmental process in the autism patients. Furthermore, the therapy also aids in the vibroacoustic therapy that involves exposing a patient to low-frequency sound waves of music. The vibrations from the sound waves are directly applied to the body of the patient and help in the improvement of disease symptoms, the patient’s mood, the collaboration of the patient in performing the therapist’s tasks, and an increase in motor skills.

Conclusion

In summary, music can be beneficial to any person but is importantly used therapeutically for those who have emotional, social, physical, or cognitive deficits. It can also be helpful in reduction of stress, relaxing, improvement of moods, or when exercising. Music therapists assist their patients in achieving goals like academic strength, development of communication, motor skills, and attention span besides pain management and behavioral therapy. In fact, the therapy improves both psychological and social outcomes which explain the reason as to why it is widely used in clinical practice. Due to the possible side effects of the pharmacological treatment of the depressive syndromes that follow a neurological disease, Music Therapy supports the patients significantly in improving their moods, reducing the symptoms, and adhering to their treatment while also contributing to their functional recovery. Markedly, the role of music in the therapy is to help the therapist form a relationship with the patient that helps unlock the thoughts and feelings of that patient.

Environmental Stress

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Environmental Stress

These are stressors that are found within the environment. The environment can have positive impact and also negative impacts which may lead to stress. The environmental stress that we are subjected to include; extreme temperatures which makes one discomfort and may lead to health problems.  Noise also contributes to stress where one cannot hear the other part properly thus straining also may damage the eardrums. Light and long exposure to darkness affects sleeping patterns. Several colors may cause fatigue. Natural disasters are also a stressing factor in the environment. Other stressors in the environment include insects, crowds, war between students, air quality and dull colors (Mechanic D, 1978).

               To handle these stresses one needs to avoid areas the environments with the stresses or control them. With noise cause by human activities one can encourage the rooms to have sound proofs and also if people make noise one should encourage them to keep quite or lower their voices. Coping with temperatures one may need to have a fan to regulate the temperatures around. If one if affected by red or yellow color they need to avoid these colors or repaint with friendly color of majority choice. Air quality needs good air conditioning and if the conditioner is spoils repairs are to be done immediately. Darkness will always be controlled by having other sources of light including electricity. By regulating this stressors one can reducing environmental stresses subjected to (Mandler G, 1975)             This stresses lead  to poor family relationships where one member is depressed in the family and cannot communicate the challenges leaving other family members worried. Also the environmental stressors may cause diseases which may be a burden for the members to treat them. Noise in the environment causes misunderstanding among members of the family also darkness disrupts family activities. In conclusion, environmental stressors need not to be a big problem in our social life because they can be easily regulated to create a good environment.

Living With Bloody MDD Is Like Trying to Dance Under the Water on Broken Legs

Kara Mental Health , 0 Comment
Living With Bloody MDD Is Like Trying to Dance Under the Water on Broken Legs

For sure, living with the mental depressive disorder can be a real nightmare, and the perfect likening is that of dancing underwater on broken legs. It is almost impossible to live entirely with depression, but a man has to push himself further.

Depression is fond of interfering with someone’s life. Severe feelings of hopelessness, sadness, loss of interest in activities and so many other emotions which are long lasting are tough to deal with. Physical symptoms of pain, sleep issues and appetite changes among many others also result.

There is always a fear in the depression recurring, and its patients, therefore, live in uncertainty and hope that they will not go through what they previously experienced. MDD causes and symptoms vary differently from an individual to another, with gender playing a significant role in why someone is affected by it, and how they experience the disorder.

How does depression feel?

It is tough to explain how one feels when they are depressed, especially to people who have never done. It is not about feeling down or sad. What is disturbing about this disorder is that it disrupts daily tasks, relationships, and career, as well as housework and self-care. No one is fond of MDD.

When one is depressed, they experience the following;

  1. They find no pleasure or joy in life
  2. Focusing or concentrating on something becomes harder; this accompanies difficulty in decision making, watching, reading, and so much more. The reason is that the patients are unable to follow or flow with what is going on.
  3. There is a lot of hopelessness in their being, the bad news being the inability to feel better. It misguides people into thinking that they will never be better again
  4. Feelings of being a failure or worthless begin to crop in the mind of the patient, making them dwell in adverse events which tear them down since they cannot feel any positive qualities about themselves
  5. Feelings of low to non-existent energy. It becomes hard for some people to get out of bed since they feel worn out all the time
  6. It interferes with the health state of a person, where many grow very thin because of lack of appetite, or obese since their desire for food is maximum
  7. Pains and aches may result. As much as MDD already has its symptoms, some people experience body aches nausea, headaches, and other pains

When one is leaving with a family, it becomes tough to be understood. Family members and friends begin to get frustrated about the behaviours of the individual, brushing them off that they do not have anything that can depress them; this usually is discouraging since all MDD patients want is to be understood and helped to overcome the disorder.

Depression presents itself differently in men and women. Different researches have suggested that the causes of depression may be different for women than for men. For women; marital problems, lack of social support, and parent relationships more often cause depression in them as compared to men. The reasoning behind this is that they have differences in experiences, biological factors, and cultural expectations.

For men, they become more depressed than women about such things as failure to achieve goals, careers, self-esteem, legal and financial issues, stressful life events and drug abuse. Whether in males or females, the reality remains that it is tough to live with the bloody MDD, and patients should be entirely supported by all means to overcome the depression for them to lead normal healthy lives.