So just earlier today, I finished a session with my counselor on betterhelp.
And I would like to share with you why I chose to sign up for better help and
what I think about it. For
those of you who are new to my channel, welcome. This channel, Awaken Joy,
is about bringing more joy into your life.
And I weave together life coaching skills, mindfulness,
meditation,
little bit of Buddhist philosophy and experience from my 20 years as a
psychotherapist.
So this channel is actually one of the two reasons that I
signed up with better help.com.
And I'm going to share with you a little more information on this,
but one reason I decided to sign up with betterhelp.com is that earlier
this spring, kind of late winter,
I was experiencing what they are now calling languishing.
It's in the news all over.
But languishing as this pandemic is dragging on,
people are just feeling blah,
they're just kind of losing interest in things.
It could also be called anhedonia. And I was experiencing a little bit of that.
I was also feeling a bit burned out by my work to be perfectly honest,
partially again, because of the pandemic, because the computer's always there.
The internet is always there. You can always do a little bit more work.
There's limited other things you can do,
but definitely it was beginning to wear on me.
And then the other thing going on in my life is that my best friend broke up
with me kind of out of the blue, after it happened,
I was able to look back and see like the little disconnections that have been
happening, but it really was a shock to me.
It was a very upsetting and I really felt like the rug had been pulled out from
under me. And I wanted to talk about it with somebody.
And she was the person who I would have talked about something like this with.
So I really had a whole number of issues that were making me think time to go
back to therapy. Now, most psychotherapists have been through psychotherapy,
which I think is a very good thing. In fact,
I highly suggest when you are doing life coaching,
it's good to see a life coach. When you do psychotherapy,
it's good to be in psychotherapy,
because it's good to experience what it's like as a client.
And then we all have issues. We all have things we need to work through.
We could all use an empathetic, caring, concerning ear,
and I think it is both good professional practice.
And I think it's very good on a personal level.
So that was one of the reasons I went back to therapy.
And the other reason I signed up with better help is that I wanted to
experience it,
to see if it is something that I would recommend to my followers on this
channel, because I am contacted right now by people around the world.
People in all different states in the United States, people in Europe, Asia,
Africa, all over, who are looking for psychotherapy help,
and don't feel like they have easy access to it.
So I wanted to experience what better help was like so that I could tell you
about it. And you can decide if it's a good fit for you or not.
So right now better help has subscribers in 160 different
countries around the world.
And they have counselors who speak 40 languages and the pricing of
betterhelp.com includes unlimited text messaging, audio,
text, video, text,
and written text messaging as well as weekly live sessions,
if you choose. So let me get to what my experience has been like.
So my first session with my counselor,
I began to talk a little bit about what I was going through.
And she really listened. She primarily listened,
but I could see the empathy on her face.
And it was so nice to talk to somebody who
wasn't personally involved in the situation.
Like she didn't have an agenda at all. Like she didn't have a like, oh,
you have to do this. Or you have to do that.
She was really open and listening and empathetic and I could
tell she got it.
Like I could tell she understood what I was struggling with.
And I had kind of forgotten how powerful that is,
how meaningful it is to speak to somebody who really
just gives you space to process what you are feeling,
to process what you're going through, to hear yourself talk,
to hear yourself brainstorm on things,
and to be met with an accepting, understanding, empathetic face.
Awesome.
Research on therapy is very interesting because one of the very key
components of psychotherapy is the relationship.
It's whether the person feels comfortable with the therapist,
the relational element of therapy is one of the most healing
components. So people are always interested in, well,
did she give good advice or was she trained in this area or did she know what to
say about this? But to be honest, when I give advice to clients,
I can sometimes see their eyes kind of, you know,
giving advice can almost in a way be a little bit insulting because it's kind of
like, whoa, you think I haven't thought about that already.
Like I already know this. Its not necessarily helpful.
So when we do chime in as therapist or ask a
question in a certain way or say, wow, I would have felt that same way.
Or why did you feel that way?
Or what do you think the other person was feeling? Or, you know,
we're trained to ask questions that help you figure out
what you need and what you need to do.
The therapy process is really one of self exploration in a healing
environment.
So I immediately felt comfortable with the counselor and I continued
to see her.
And then I was feeling like I was definitely feeling better after a few
sessions. And I was thinking, okay, you know, maybe I'm going to phase out here.
And then boom yesterday, a big family issue hit.
And today I just really wanted to get on the call with
her and process through what had happened,
because I wasn't clear on: was my response reasonable?
Is the way I'm viewing this situation the right way to view it?
Or at least is the way I'm viewing the situation -does it make sense?
I think so often we just want to know, like, does this make sense? Like,
can you relate to this and that it drives so much of the things we
get into conflict for because conf, you know, situations are complicated.
It's actually the situation in my family is really a boundary issue.
And in some ways I'm a boundary expert.
Like I am pretty well versed on both a personal level and certainly a
professional level on boundaries.
I know a lot about boundaries and yet these situations aren't
clear. There's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of choice.
And just being able to bounce this off somebody so helpful.
So I have no desire on better help to switch my counselor to be perfectly
honest, but that's also a really nice element with better help,
is that if you do not like the counselors you're seeing,
where you feel like they crossed a line, or maybe they're just not helping,
you can switch counselors very easily on better help.
And the other thing that's nice about betterhelp is that you have your
counselors get a rating so better help itself, the organization,
gets feedback on the counselors pretty quickly.
Plus you can rate them and rank them and you don't get that with a private
practice therapist, right?
You might get a recommendation from a friend who went to this therapist,
but there's really no accountability or there's limited accountability in
the private practice field. So given my positive experience with better health,
I decided to become an affiliate. And I have an affiliate link below,
the notes below this video that will give you 10% off your first month.
If you use that link,
I also want to be clear that better help did not pay for or sponsor this
video.
I was not paid to do this video and I was not required to do this video to
become an affiliate. Now, if you do sign up through my affiliate link,
this channel will earn a small commission,
which is helpful because it helps to sustain the channel,
helps me to produce this material for free for so many people around the world.
I wanted to have something to provide to my
viewers, my subscribers,
the people who follow me on YouTube and the people all over the world who have
limited access to good therapy. So if you're interested,
check it out. The link is below in the notes to this video.
There's a little thing that says show more. If you don't see it,
if you click on that, you'll see all sorts of links.
I do have some free resources under there for you as well.
If you found this video helpful,
please share it with somebody who may benefit from it.
And if you liked the video, please do like, and let me know, comment below.
Have you tried better help? What was your experience?
What would you like to tell people who are considering using betterhelp
for psychotherapy? And I look forward to seeing you next week, hopefully.
Bye-bye.