If you decide to enter therapy, your therapist will probably ask you to think about two interrelated questions (they may be expressed in a variety of ways): "Where are you now?" and "Where do you want to go?" Your therapist or counselor will, as he comes to know you, often be able to help you to answer these by sharing his perceptions of you. One of the main tasks of the counseling process is to help a person gain improved self-understanding that embraces both present problems and future goals.
Yet if you can gain a certain measure of self-understanding and self-direction before entering counseling or therapy, it will be easier for you to choose an approach to counseling or therapy that more closely fits your problems, values, objectives, available time, and even your financial needs. You should find in this book a basis for preliminary self-counseling that will give you a sense of how and where best to begin therapy.
It is important to recognize that none of us ever reaches a final state of self-knowledge: as long as we live, our self-understanding is capable of growing. What we really understand about ourselves and what we believe ourselves to need and want are never more than provisional, tentative. Additional experience, just the fact of living longer, very likely will lead you to perceive yourself differently and motivate you to modify your priorities and change your goals.
WHERE ARE YOU NOW?
Late in 1984, the National Institute of Mental Health released the first published results of the largest mental health survey ever conducted. The results are startling and are an unhappy commentary on our society and world.
The report shows that 20 percent of Americans suffer from psychiatric disorders. Yet only one in five of these seeks help. The others live with their suffering.
The most common problems are these:
Millions of Americans Psychiatric Name of Condition with This Disorder
Anxiety disorders 13.1
Phobias 11.1
Substance abuse (alcohol, drugs, etc.) 10.0
Affective disorders (including
depression and manic depression) 9.4
Obsessive-compulsive disorders 2.4
Cognitive impairment 1.6
Schizophrenia 1.5
Antisocial personality 1.4
The NIMH study also shows that women are twice as likely to seek help as men. Two interrelated inferences are commonly made from this previously known fact: women are often more accepting of their emotional state (men in our society are taught to disregard their feelings, part of machismo), and women are less willing to allow pride to stand in their way of getting help (women are less affected by the myth of self-sufficiency).