Part 2: Why go to a Psychologist?

 

The psychologist offers objectivity:

 

When you talk to family and friends about your personal problems or have questions about things that you might prefer that they not be aware of, your fear is that they will not receive your comments and respond to them objectively. There are often things of a very personal nature which one does not want generally known among family and friends. The psychologist, on the other hand, provides a service of listening to your most personal concerns and interests for information from an objective point of view. The psychologist does not come to the conversation with you with any preconceptions about you or desire to pressure you into doing things that you might not want to do.

 

In listening to your questions, problems, and concerns, the psychologist takes an analytical viewpoint, which, in turn, is offered to you to help you to see and understand your problems with a greater perspective. The psychologist, also, listens to the ways that you express yourself, describe the concern and problem, and gains insight into your personality in order to assist you in positively dealing with circumstances confronting you. The psychologist, further, approaches the analyses of your problems and concerns from a distinctive, trained background which can be used to help you to gain insight and control of yourself and of elements of the situation or circumstances confronting you.

 

In describing your problems, you see them through your personal perspective, but the psychologist sees them through a professional perspective. Thus, your ways of identifying your problems and concerns may be skewed in such a way as to distort your thinking and, therefore, ultimately, your pursuit of their resolution. The input from the professional psychological point of view clarifies your thinking and pares it down to the essentials that you might not have even thought of before. Thus, in addition to objectivity, the psychologists offers a fresh way to see and approach the resolution of your problems and concerns.

 

Additionally, the professional psychologist can offer you a variety of ways to encounter and cope with your concern and problems which would never have occurred to you alone.

 

Further, the psychologist is not emotionally involved either with you or with the causes or circumstances of the problem. So the psychologist’s recommendations are not intended to assert any personal perspective or point of view. Their purpose is only therapeutic, to help you to deal more effectively with your concerns and problems.

 

In approaching our problems, most often, you can apply only what you already know in seeking solutions or resolutions for them, but those approaches may be ineffective, and you may end up no closer to a solution or resolution than you were before. The professional psychologists can offer you new approaches to dealing with your “old” problems which are likely to be more successful than your tries in the past, so the visit to the psychologist opens up a new “road map” to help you to guide yourself through concerns and problems that have got you literally or figuratively “road blocked.” The “second opinion” creates new ways of thinking about concerns and problems which can lead to more positive results than have been the case in the past.

 

Thus, time spent in visiting a psychologist is an investment in your personal well-being because it will broaden your personal understanding of yourself and your problems and concerns and more positively assist you in the discovery of dealing with them.

 

NEXT: More indications of why to go to a psychologist.