originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:54 PM

Has anything we have discussed tonight changed your mind about getting help and how to go about it?

 

 

For me, not really, I've always been quite vocal about what I do and don't like about a counsellors methods and such, but I am hoping that someone found tonight at least a bit insightful. 🙂

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:58 PM

Has anything we have discussed tonight changed your mind about getting help and how to go about it?

Not really, and thats a good thing because I'm pretty happy with how things are going for me with getting help. Hopefully there is someone out there who is thinking about getting help for the first time and this has had a positive impact on

originally posted on 10-10-2016 10:06 PM

thanks everyone for coming

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:56 PM

Has anything we have discussed tonight changed your mind about getting help and how to go about it?

 

Yeah, a bit. There's a friend I know who's been thinking about getting help for a while, so I might pass on some of the things mentoned in this thread. It's been good to hear about everyone's experiences 🙂

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:33 PM

How do you know when its time to find someone new? If you've done this how'd you go about it?

I am really lucky that with the Headspace I go to there is basically a little team of people working with not just the counsellor, this is so you get the best experience and people can work together to find whats best. I went to someone in that little team about this and told them I was considering not coming back and they were really helpful, they gave me the opportunity to try someone else, they didn't question me and tell me that I can't, they really listened and thankfully found someone there that was more suited to me

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:16 PM

Definitely agree with that one! @Ben-RO

originally posted on 10-10-2016 8:56 PM

 

Have you had a not so great experience with seeking help? What do you think made it unhelpful? How could the experience have been made better?

 

Actually i have been pretty lucky, although working as a mental health advocate for a lot of years, i saw some less than ideal examples of people not being helped. Almost always it was because of services that were veeeery overworked and just missing some of the important things that support help, like explaining the process, making sure the person felt heard etc

originally posted on 10-10-2016 8:58 PM

Question four...

 

Does the fear of a bad experience put you off seeking help? What are some ways to combat this fear?

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:21 PM

Does the fear of a bad experience put you off seeking help? What are some ways to combat this fear?

Absolutely... Fear or expectation.

Ways to combat the fear might be to research your options, get advice from other people who have sought help (particularly like on RO where people can explain what happened when they tried getting help from certain places), maybe take it in small steps (e.g. you could tell a friend first if that's easier, then get their help to tell your parents, and then get your parents help to contact your GP... etc.)

 

Ways to combat the expectation... Well... I guess it goes back to gathering actual evidence from either trying it yourself or first hand accounts from people who have tried it.

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:03 PM

Does the fear of a bad experience put you off seeking help? What are some ways to combat this fear?

 

I think that fear of a bad experience is one of many things that can put you off seeking help, because seeking help can be pretty scary, especially the first time. The only thing I can think of to combat this is to 'feel the fear and do it anyway' which doesn't seem particularly helpful, so what does everyone else think?

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:30 PM

Does the fear of a bad experience put you off seeking help? What are some ways to combat this fear?

 

Oooh boy. Absolutely, yes. Not so much nowadays, but definitely when I was younger. Took me about a week of standing awkwardly/pacing outside the school counsellor's office before I finally worked up the courage/desperation to actually go in there- and that was after months of thinking about it.

 

Honestly, these days I think young people (ugh, using young people in third person makes me feel old) actually have pretty good ways of fighting this, just because there are so many places where help-seeking/support is available. If it'd been available/I'd known about it, I'd have definitely have found an online counselling webchat/crisis helpline (that I could use anonymously/confidentially) much, much easier to use than diving right into seeing the school counsellor or going to a GP (particularly since the latter would require me to use my parents' medicare card, and all that entailed). I see it as a kind of gradated "exposure therapy" (all the psych majors should know what I'm talking about 😞

 

You start off by reaching out to an anonymous support network (e.g. RO, beyondblue, Kids Helpline/Lifeline, etc.) that you can access privately from somewhere you're comfortable (E.g. in your own room, on your laptop), then working your way up from there, after you've gotten a bit more used to telling your story, and gotten some preliminary evidence that you won't get immediately judged/derided for seeking help. So you start out via some relatively less-terrifying and move upwards, as you become more comfortable with the process. It's definitely scary the first time you do it, but every time you push yourself, your comfort zone is going to get larger, and larger, and it'll just feel more and more normal, until you wonder how you ever managed to keep so much pain inside you in the first place.

 

Another thing that might help, is just recognizing the potential positives that helpseeking might have, and recognize the impact that helpseeking might have upon achieving your goals. A big part of what finally pushed me to go and get formal help was because I thought I was going to fail my HSC (which I didn't, thankfully), and I realized that my depression was becoming a larger and larger barrier towards achieving my dreams -namely, going to uni and becoming a psychologist- that I couldn't ignore anymore (and had probably been ignoring for far too long). Once I realized that my dreams mattered more to me than the sheer terror I felt about help-seeking, I felt like I had no choice but to take that first step. It wasn't an easy choice by any definition, but it was necessary. 

 

So I took it.

 

And I've never regretted that decision since.

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:13 PM

Does the fear of a bad experience put you off seeking help? What are some ways to combat this fear?

 

It did to a certain extent, but it was mainly the fear of the stereotypes being true that put me off seeking help. I overcame this by researching services that may be of help to me and then when I had a moment of courage, I got in contact with a service and haven't looked back since.

 

So in short, if you have a moment of courage, use it and take the plunge. 

 

Of course, it doesn't always have to be a service, it can be a trusted friend or adult in your life.

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:15 PM

So true @stonepixie it doesn't have to be a service, the first person I ever spoke to about not good stuff was a teacher at school!

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:03 PM

yeah it really isn't the counsellors fault @Ben-RO its funding and staffing and all that, but nothing wrong with giving letter writing a go so that some changes can maybe be made

originally posted on 10-10-2016 8:26 PM

Oh yeah @khaleesi_18, confidentiallity is totally important! I forgot that one ha. I think it's good to know about who can and can't say what to who before you see someone.

originally posted on 10-10-2016 8:35 PM

Time for question 3.... 

 

Have you had a not so great experience with seeking help? What do you think made it unhelpful? How could the experience have been made better?

originally posted on 10-10-2016 8:55 PM

Have you had a not so great experience with seeking help? What do you think made it unhelpful? How could the experience have been made better?

 

I was going to say "No"...but then I realized that my first experience of seeking help was actually approaching my parents, rather than approaching a counsellor, or GP. I think the main thing that made it unhelpful was that they ultimately had no idea what to do, and as a result, pretty much had zero follow-through on most, if not all the occasions I sought help from them. Sure, they could hug me and listen as I wept and cried (sometimes for hours), but if nothing changed after all these chats and conversations, then what was the point? I actually felt like I was starting to lose it after a little while, because there'd be a weird sense of deja vu every day as everyone stuck to their same habits and routines, despite the fact that I'd made it clear that I was very not okay just the night before, like it'd never happened!

 

This might've been "fine" if I were approaching say, a crisis helpline where lack of continuity is to be expected since you're likely to be talking to someone different everytime, but if we're talking about help-seeking from friends, parents, counsellors, etc., then there really should be a sense that something is being done, even if we're not really sure what that "thing" is yet. Unless someone is literally a toddler, object permanence shouldn't be a barrier to providing support.

 

Edit: I can understand why it happens, though. Knowledge of mental illness (and particularly how to treat/alleviate it) can be really sparse, and most people just aren't comfortable with providing support on a consistent basis- so it becomes easier to just pretend it doesn't exist until someone has an "episode" again. I don't fault/blame anyone for letting it happen, it just sucks that it does. 

originally posted on 10-10-2016 9:01 PM

Good point, @Asche!

Sometimes our parents don't know what to do and other times they freak out because they know what to do, but there is no service near by or they can't believe it is happening to their child as well.