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5 Invaluable Benefits of Supportive Counseling
Whether you face stress at work, caring for your family, or your own physical and mental health, if you’re a woman living in modern society, you likely feel as if life is just too much sometimes. Women face a complex set of challenges and have specific psychological needs that are all too often unmet.
At A Woman’s Wellspring, Stephanie Taylor, MD, PhD, and her staff are focused on supporting your health as a whole person, rather than simply giving you the correct screenings at the appropriate times and addressing your symptoms. Your emotional health is closely tied to your physical health, and supportive counseling provides tools for meeting your psychological needs.
Reasons to consider counseling
In conventional medical settings, you may go to your doctor once a year for a physical, and otherwise only if you’re having some kind of problem. The same model doesn’t work very well for supportive counseling. A once-per-year counseling session isn’t likely to help you, and you may not even realize you have an issue that could be addressed through counseling.
Dr. Taylor sees patients for counseling for a wide variety of reasons, such as:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Trauma
- Stress
- Anger
- Grief
- Navigating transitions, such as menopause or divorce
You can expect Dr. Taylor to listen to your feelings without judging you, validate your emotional responses, help you build confidence, and help you develop methods for handling your problems. Patients report feeling safe and respected during counseling sessions.
Here are five benefits of supportive counseling.
1. Emotional support
Modern life is frequently lonely, and when you’re dealing with an additional mental health burden, such as depression, or a life transition, you may not have the emotional support available in your life that you need.
In counseling, Dr. Taylor provides emotional support by listening, validating, and sympathizing. Simply knowing you can describe how you feel to someone who won’t judge you gives you the freedom to explore those feelings.
2. Developing coping skills
Pretty much everyone has experienced a moment of “I can’t” — when you think you just cannot deal with a specific problem, or maybe all of your problems. Moments like that require coping skills, and supportive counseling can help you develop those skills so you can deploy them as needed.
3. Improved self-awareness
Have you ever found yourself angry, suddenly, and with no discernible cause? Or perhaps you’ve started crying unexpectedly? Supportive counseling can help you begin to detect thinking patterns or identify behaviors that contribute to conflict.
Once you see these patterns, you can begin making changes and experience personal growth.
4. Better communication
When you have a safe place to talk through your feelings, you discover that you can communicate more effectively, both with others and internally. Better communication means better relationships and good relationships are crucial for mental health.
5. More ways to solve problems
Sometimes problems feel overwhelming and intractable. Supportive counseling gives you the tools to become a better problem-solver. Dr. Taylor can help you identify different approaches to your difficulties, and help you discover creative ways to deal with them.
Individual treatment
One of the most important aspects of Dr. Taylor’s work with her patients is that she treats you as the unique individual you are. Your mental health concerns, or even your stress levels and responsibilities, are not the same as anyone else’s in the world. Dr. Taylor comes to your counseling sessions prepared to get to know you.
Dr. Taylor doesn’t offer cookie-cutter solutions. Instead, she provides space for you to be who you are and helps you work through your specific problems. If you’re ready to learn more about supportive counseling, schedule an appointment at A Woman’s Wellspring today.