I receive this question quite often from incoming clients or people that are just curious about mental health treatment and therapy. We tend to be pretty goal oriented and solution focused in this country so of course when we think about healing, we want to know about the best treatment possible.
There are two main components in my professional opinion that lead to the best treatment for mental health therapy. I’ve listed them below:
1. The therapeutic relationship. There has been research done over and over and over again that proves that the relationship between therapist and client is the most important indicator for success in treatment. I value and adore every single one of my clients, and feel so grateful and lucky to work with them. That sense of trust, connection, understanding, and unconditional positive regard is so important. I’ve had clients who switch from another therapist to me because they say that they just didn’t feel connected to their old therapist. Some ways that the therapeutic relationship can be strengthened are if your therapist makes you feel really seen, heard, and it’s clear that you have their undivided attention. It also builds a solid relationship when it’s clear that they remember things that you’ve told them in parts of your story. Some ways to hurt the therapeutic relationship is if you see that your therapist is distracted, they make you feel invalidated, they try to tell you what to do or you don’t feel that they are competent. I can’t overstate how important it is to choose a therapist that you feel connected and seen by. This leads to the best mental health treatment possible.
2. Somatic therapy and bottom up techniques. I believe wholeheartedly that if we do not treat the mind and body holistically then we are missing a huge part of the picture. 80% of the information center nervous system is sent from our body and only 20% is in from our brain. What that means is that our body has stored a lot of the negative experiences we’ve been through and in order to fully heal we need to listen to the signals and wisdom of our body. There are some therapies that just purely focus on trying to change thoughts, which no doubt is part of the picture, but it definitely is not the whole picture. I would go so far as to say some therapies that just focus on thoughts can feel in validating, because they make you feel like if you just change your thoughts, then your anxiety will go away. But this is not the case. It’s like that situation where our mind knows some thing and we intellectually know why someone did some thing that harmed us, but it still hurts in our body and emotionally.
These are the two most important part of affective mental health therapy in my professional opinion. If you don’t feel a connection to your therapist, then I would suggest telling them that and trying to work through it first and then if nothing changes find a therapist that you do feel connected to. It’s very important that folks are getting the treatment that they deserve.
If you have any more questions about somatic therapy, mental health therapy or trauma therapy please reach out via the Metta Holistic Therapy contact page or email me directly at reneeminxtherapy@gmail.com – if you’re in crisis or an emergency please call 911.
Metta Holistic Therapy 