You're not alone & you're not imagining it - it truly IS hard to get the right support for our mental health.
It takes so much courage to begin a search for support for our mental health.
I’ve done it myself, several times in my life - When I’ve realised I’m saying ‘I’m fine’, then losing it in a burst of rage, at the drop of a hat. When I’ve found myself crying, seemingly inexplicably, on too many days in a row, in recent months. When I’ve realised that my assumption that ‘things will get better on their own, soon’ is a hope I’ve held for a long time now … and yet … I feel stuck.
This isn’t talked about enough in our society, but it takes HUGE courage for us to be honest with ourselves in these times - to accept the realisation that we cannot navigate the tricky times in our lives totally alone.
It is infinitely easier, in many respects, to keep thinking we’re ‘fine, really’. To keep hiding our vulnerability from others, and from ourselves. To keep numbing the difficult emotions with food, alcohol, exercise, work, scrolling or shopping.
It is often far harder to turn to our pain, and admit to ourselves: ‘I am struggling, and I need help’.
For those of us who do muster this courage, many of us start with a visit to our GP, and rightly so…
Some things to keep in mind, about NHS mental health services:
In my experience, both personally and professionally - GP’s, although often good people and well-meaning, often don’t receive a lot of training in mental health provision themselves. Furthermore, they also too often have their hands tied by the restrictive referral criteria of under-funded and over-subscribed community NHS mental health services.
Therefore, we’re sadly often not met with great empathy and understanding by our GP - more often, in my experience, we are met with a sense that we may be taking up too much of their time. I’ve also not met a single GP in my life who has acknowledged the courage it has taken me to be there, sitting in front of them, asking them for help. For some of us, therefore, we come out of our GP feeling like we really shouldn’t open up about our mental health, because it really doesn’t feel any better when we do…
Furthermore, at the service level of our GP, we are most commonly offered nothing in the way of talking therapy, and instead we are offered anti-depressants, or anxiety medication as a first-line treatment for our mental health.
I’m certainly not ‘anti-meds’, and these medications may be useful to lower the intensity of our symptoms, and that can be absolutely invaluable in some cases. However, in any case, medication alone has no hope of increasing our understanding of how we ended up stuck, nor can it empower us to make the right environmental, behavioural & cognitive changes, so that we may become unstuck with our own agency, and learn how to avoid becoming stuck again.
On the other hand, good talking therapy is far more likely to be able to offer us this insight & support, that will assist in both in the short-term and the long-term.
If we are offered NHS talking therapy (and it’s a big ‘if’), it is often only offered with a very long waiting time between that GP appointment, and the next time you get to speak to an empathic human (and that is if indeed they are empathic - I know from experience that the vast majority of staff in NHS mental health services are good people, and are doing their best - but they are also often very tired, and near burnout themselves, and/or suffering from compassion fatigue).
If and when you do get through to empathic NHS talking therapy services, you are very often offered only a very limited number of sessions, and you do not get any choice of your therapist - You may be offered 6 sessions (12 if you’re very lucky in your particular postcode lottery), and in this case it’s likely that you will feel that you’re just getting started in trusting your therapist and beginning to open up to them … and then that is it. You’re done. Meant to be feeling better by now …. Only you’re not.
If you have experienced this, you are not alone, and there is nothing wrong with you.
In my first-hand experience, the NHS is too often grossly underfunded when it comes to mental health, meaning it simply cannot provide what is so often needed. And this is bad enough - except in addition to this, it then also does not do a good enough job of owning the responsibility of the poor outcomes associated with the inadequate services it offers. Instead, the NHS tends to let the clients of its services feel that it is their fault for not getting better, when in reality those clients didn’t really have a chance, given what they were offered.
It’s lucky therefore that some of us have the privilege and resource, to (a) be aware of private therapy options and (b) possibly afford them, AND (c) have the energy to plunge even further depths of our courage and resilience, to keep moving forward to seek further help when our initial efforts have proved so fruitless. It shouldn’t only be ‘some of us’ - I wish I lived in a world where EVERYONE could access the good therapy they need, when they need it, and I am sad and angry that this is not the world we live in yet.
Maybe private talking therapy services can help?
For those of us who do have this privilege and therefore more options available to us - most often, we turn to Google.
We type “therapist in [our local area]” or “online therapy” …
Only to feel, often, well … even more overwhelmed.
Many of us don’t know, until we begin to look for one, that there are actually many various types of professionals who offer spaces to talk with you and support you through life’s challenges - psychologists, clinical psychologists, counselling psychologists, counsellors, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, CBT therapists, coaches, art therapists, family therapists, psychodynamic therapists, EMDR therapists … the list seems endless.
Beginning to explore the world of private therapy reveals the other side of the coin - Whereas in the NHS you often get no choice, in the private world there is often too much choice.
Both experiences make it incredibly hard to get the help you need.
So - where do you start? How do you make sense of all of these private therapy options, and move forward towards finding the best therapist for your needs?
Perhaps this overwhelm causes you to turn away from Google, and go back to scrolling, to numbing out - You are not alone if so. It is the very times that we are most in need of a therapist, that we are feeling our most vulnerable, and often lacking in cognitive and energetic capacity - we often simply do not have it in us to begin to tackle the seemingly impossible task of:
Sifting through the options; following misleading links on Google (because some therapists have paid to have their ad at the top of a vaguely similar search to the one you have typed in); reading therapist bios; comparing prices; looking at photos of prospective therapists to find the ones that ‘look empathic and kind’…
It can be truly exhausting. Especially if you set out thinking there was only one type of therapist, and you’re not sure of the actual difference between them all …
Sadly, this post cannot take all the pain away from this process for you.
I hope that what I have shared above goes some way to helping you feel that there is nothing wrong with you if your experience echoes any of what you read here- finding the right therapist is complex, it is hard, the NHS system often is working against you and your mental health - you are not imagining it, and you are not alone.
I have probably now worked with thousands of clients, in both NHS mental health services, and private practice, and I can’t think of many examples, if any, of clients describing their journey through the NHS and into private therapy as easy, supportive, non-obstructive, empathic and entirely helpful.
Knowing this context matters.
Knowing this context means that if and when this happens to you, you have far less of a chance of thinking: ‘I knew I was wrong to open up and seek help, I knew deep down I can’t be helped, there must be something wrong with me’, and instead you’ll have far more chance of thinking: ‘oh yeah, I was warned about this, this isn’t about me at all - I have valid needs, and I am worthy of support & empathy - this is about underfunding in mental health in the NHS & the overwhelming nature of what else is on offer - I’m not a hopeless case, in the slightest’.
If you know anyone who is having a hard time finding the right support for their mental health, and whom you think might benefit from reading this, then please do share this post - more of us need to feel less alone in this very real struggle.
If you’re keen to hear more about how to navigate seeking help for your mental health in the UK (I can only speak to the UK because this is where I live and work, although I’m also certain that there are similar themes in other countries, all throughout the western world), then do hit subscribe - there is much more to come!
Next up in this series will be some posts describing some of the key differences between the most common types of therapist who offer their services privately, including psychologists (like me), counsellors and psychotherapists. Hopefully this should help you, to cut through the noise, and find the best support for you, faster.
Jenny
I am Dr. Jenny Turner, Clinical Psychologist and founder of Mind Body Soul Psychology - a private psychology practice in which I offer face-to-face psychology assessment and intervention to individuals and couples in Ripon, Yorkshire (UK), as well as UK-wide online psychology services, via Zoom.
I am passionate about assisting people to alleviate their suffering, by helping them to better understand, embrace and honour their human needs & their humanity, and to feel less alone in their suffering.
You can find out more about the psychology services I offer via my website.
