Who Is Therapy For?
The simple answer is: everyone!
I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see clients seeking therapy at younger ages. The more I do my own therapeutic work and reflect on my childhood and teen years, I realize that growing up, I needed therapy REALLY badly. I was anxious all the time, I had an intense inner critic that demanded perfection, and I had no idea! I can laugh about it now, but from ages 4-18 I threw up whenever I had to perform - every piano recital, every swim meet, every school play, every class presentation. Instead of thinking about therapy, my mom would just say, “You’re a puker! You come from a family of pukers!” So I normalized it, and the anxiety ate at me for years! I've done pretty well in life considering, but I can only imagine how much suffering I could have avoided if I had started therapy as a kid or a teen instead of in my late 20s.
While therapy clients are starting to seek help at a younger age, there is still this stigma out there that says you only need therapy if things are really bad. But the more we learn about trauma, we see that while individual events can create a wound, it’s what happens after the event that determines if it remains only a wound, or turns into lasting trauma. If a child breaks her leg and an adult is there to take her to the doctor and get a cast, that child will have a temporary wound. But if a child breaks her leg and there is no adult to take care of her, or the adults in her life don’t believe her and she doesn’t receive the necessary care, over time this wound can have a lasting impact on the child’s health. It is the same with mental health! We all have experienced painful things, but if we seek support sooner rather than later, that pain can be healed and does not need to have a lasting impact.
If I could talk to my child/teen self now, I would tell her that therapy is an option for her, and things don’t need to get worse for her to take advantage of mental health support. I would tell her that instead of puking, she can tell a safe person how she’s feeling, she can journal, she can do some deep breathing exercises, or she can meditate. And I would tell her that however unbearable her feelings are, they are going to pass. Sometimes we just need some extra help and some extra tools, and you are never too young to pursue the help you need!