Benefits of Treatment

A major benefit of treatment is developing the ability to know yourself. By becoming more aware of why you do things you learn not to repeat mistakes..

Why should you get treatment in the first place?

I have discussed some of the difficulties of being in therapy. So what makes it worth going through those difficulties and paying the costs?

It's simple. If we don't figure out what we are doing, we keep doing it. Your best thinking got you where you are right now. Just in case you didn't get it the first time-- George Santayana said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

This is no accident and not a moral failing on your part (or on mine since I repeat things too.) Our brains are set up in a way to protect us from anxiety by keeping things outside of our awareness.

Yet you need to know as much as you can to make the best decisions. Sometimes you make decisions and you realize later that you did it for a different reason than you thought. Sometimes you see patterns and you wonder why you didn't see them before. You realize you have chosen the same type boyfriend, or job or recreated the same conflictual situation. You see yourself thinking the same things and feeling the same bad way you felt before. Sometimes you learn mistaken assumptions. You operate on those without questioning them and they cause you misery. You may have learned them as a child when you recorded the events and drew the conclusions using the best recording equipment you had as a child.

Anxiety is not always bad. It could be a signal to you that you need to look at something you have been avoiding. It is like a red light on your dashboard that tells you to look under the hood of your car. You could ignore it and tape over the light but the car might have more difficulty later. Your car might also have your spouse or family in it with you.

What do you risk by putting off treatment?

So, you have decided to wait...So you still have doubts about psychiatry or the need to see someone.

What are the risks if you are not getting help? Besides suicide there are many risks of postponing help. Your cortisol level stays up and that raises blood pressure and blood sugar. It can lead to weight gain. If your serotonin level is getting lower you will have more risk of panic attack. Your social withdrawal may alienate your friends. Your irritability may upset your family and endanger your marriage. Your ability to function in school, work and family may be at risk. You may lose someone you love when they leave you. Your productivity and sick time will change. Your hippocampus will shrink and your short term memory may get worse if you are depressed. In an effort to save money by avoiding treatment you may find yourself spending more than you saved on such things as divorce lawyers, diets to lose the weight you put on from your comfort eating, things you charged to make yourself feel better, boyfriends you shouldn't have picked, and for the treatment of physical illness related to your ongoing stress. Worse yet you may have an organic illness that could have been treated but is no longer treatable. For example, cancer of the tail of the pancreas has no localizing symptoms early and often presents with depression as the only symptom. (Don't make the assumption that what you don't know can't hurt you.) Hyperthyroidism can present as anxiety. Not treating your ADD may cost you college or career opportunities and result in impulsive choices you pay for later.

When you decide you are not going to get into treatment you are assuming you know what you are missing. Because the field of mental health has advanced so rapidly there are things you may not know about. Do you know about dialectical behavior therapy, about Eye Movement Desensitization and Retraining, about vagal nerve stimulation, about selective melatonin agonists, about transcranial magnetic stimulation, about neurolinguistic programming or the new antidepressant patch?