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I often quietly wondered to myself “should I go for therapy“. For so many years, I put my head in the sand like an ostrich, avoiding this possibility of therapy because quite simply – I was frightened. I was scared that it would be a complete can of worms and that if I went for therapy it would be the unraveling of me.

But one day, the straw that broke the donkey’s back made me crash, and I knew that this was something I needed to do. For myself, for my partner, and for my daughter.

The upshot? Turning the question “should I go for therapy” into “I’m going to have therapy” was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my lifetime. Having therapy has made me a better person, a better parent, calmer and more at peace with the world, and ultimately, better able to handle the curveballs it inevitably throws at us.

So if you’re reading this wondering “should I go for therapy?”, my answer to you would be yes.

Sure, we are all different, have our own unique challenges, problems and baggage. But therapy gives us the insight and understanding we need to manage our own struggles and behaviour, and overall helps us to function better on so many levels both as a parent and human being.

With that said, today I want to give up the floor to Jo Love, author of Therapy is Magic (which I truly believe it is!) to share some reasons why therapy might just be the best thing you do as a parent.

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Should you go for therapy?

So many of us have preconceived notions about therapy, what it’s like and about who needs it and why. But in reality, anyone can go to therapy and anyone can benefit from it. You may turn to therapy for help with a specific problem in your life or with your family, or you may see it as a way to maintain your emotional health through good times and bad. Whatever the case may be, it can make you a happier and healthier human which in turn can help those around you, including your kids.

Reasons therapy might be the best thing you do as a parent

Most parents will admit having a child, while being wonderful and life-changing in a whole host of positive ways, is a huge transition, as pretty much every area of your life, from finances to your sleep gets disrupted. It can also wreak havoc on your mental and emotional health in ways you could never have anticipated.

Therapy is certainly something that can help you as a parent manage the emotional challenges that comes with raising tiny (and not so tiny) humans and here’s why:

You are not alone

Although some great inroads have been made in recent years, there is still a strong societal message that new motherhood is a time of nothing but unadulterated bliss.

There’s an expectation of what it’s like to become a parent and the reality can be very different, and there simply aren’t enough people taking about it how hard it can be.  A therapist can help you recognise that mixed emotions about motherhood are totally normal. Therapy allows you to talk about any fears, anxieties, worries that you might not feel comfortable talking about to a family member or friend or other mums who seem to have it all under control.

To learn

Therapy can help you learn about yourself, as well as your children, and how you might interact with them. Therapy can help with skills and strategies for managing the tough moments that life (or your tantrumming toddler) inevitably will throw at you!

So many of us spend a lifetime pushing down and not acknowledging our own feelings. But here’s the thing, if you can’t feel your own feelings, then it’s very hard to be able to sit with, let alone tolerate other people’s. With the help of a therapist, we can slowly learn how to bear our own pain and sadness, to then be better able to bear the pain and sadness of our children.

Setting an example

Children are little sponges and learn as much, if not more from what they see us do as from what they hear us say. When they see us taking time to do something like therapy that is good for our emotional wellbeing, our children learn how to do it for themselves also.

Therapy can give us healthy ways to deal with our anxieties and frustrations, and seeing us model those behaviours can set a great example for our kids too.

As they grow, the desire to fix our kids’ issues and problems can be strong, but the way to help isn’t to fix but instead to ‘feel with’. When we listen to our kids with empathy it builds their resilience and their ability to cope with life’s ups and downs. Through receiving empathy in our own therapy, we can learn and model how to give it to our children too.

Asking for help

As parents, our needs are often overshadowed, understandably so, by those of our children. It’s very normal for us as parents to find we spend so much time and energy thinking about our kids’ physical and emotional well-being that it can be all too easy to forget to take care of our own.

But here’s the thing, taking care of ourselves is just as important as taking care of our children. We’ve all heard the phrase you can’t pour from an empty cup and it’s very true. If we aren’t nurturing ourselves, we can’t expect to be able to nurture our children.

Therapy can help you find a way to regularly consider your own needs alongside those of your family. It can teach you how to better communicate with those around you who need your help, or how to be more realistic with what we can accomplish in a given day, or how long we can go without a break.

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Me-time

It can feel almost impossible to make time for ourselves when we are busy with the seemingly endless juggle of domestic duties that come with raising our kids. But therapy is a great way to recharge and scheduling a therapy session guarantees that you spend a little while each week focused solely on your own well-being. Therapy is the perfect time that’s just for you, a little ‘me time’, something which I think all mums can agree they are in short supply of.

Generational cycles

If you didn’t have a wonderful relationship with your own parents growing up, you might struggle to figure out a healthy parenting style yourself. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to be stuck in an unhelpful or unhealthy generational pattern.  Going to therapy can help you work through those things so that you don’t become the parent that you don’t want to be. Therapy gives us the space to reflect on how we were parented and what we might want to take forward from our pasts but also what we’d like to leave behind.

For mental illness

It is estimated that up to 20% of expectant or new mums will be affected by a mental illness. Unfortunately, not all of them are getting help and many people don’t get the help and support they need. A therapist, whether seen privately or through the NHS, will be able to help support you through any mental illness as well as help you understand that such issues are very common and very normal.

Jo Love’s Therapy is… Magic: An essential guide to the ups, downs and life-changing experiences of talking therapy is available from Amazon

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