Mental health therapy should be seen as a three-legged stool.
One leg, perhaps the most important, is talk therapy. We need a companion, sometimes, to affirm us, to gently point us at a different way of looking at things, to help us figure things out.
Sometimes, things are so difficult that chemical intervention is needed, to get us through the day. That can be an over-the-counter option like CBD oil, essential oils, or herbs. It can be prescription psychotropic medications. Ideally, these are taken just until you can right your ship and sail along yourself. That’s the second leg of mental health therapy.
But the third leg, one that is just becoming visible, is maturing the sub- and un-conscious nervous system. Katy had tried psychologists and counselors and a good psychiatrist, and needed medications to get through the day. Medication and talk therapy were not making the difference she needed.
Often enough, when I get a referral from a counselor, it doesn’t take long before the client is where s/he would like to be. Most of the work has been done with talk therapy, and my part of it is just getting the nervous system to match what the conscious client already knows, to get comfortable with their new lives. With Katy, it was different. All of the problems were in her deeply buried unconscious, and needed to be unearthed. We knew we were onto the right thing when it changed her world, and seemed to release her from a prison of angst.