Do I Need Therapy?

I know you cannot judge it 100% because you are not doctors ect.. and just to make sure you understand, I am not looking for a professional answer, only each of your opinions.

Right, so incase my mental health nurse specialist tells me that I would find this useful and since you lot have personal experience with it, would it be useful to be me? Cause I don't want to be stupid and say no to it, if it 'may' help the following issues below:

MY ISSUES
- Thinking people are going to abandon me (Everyone but family)
- Very little clue about anything to do with social situations
- Trust
- Dealing with and understanding emotions
- Trying to ignore the death of my dad instead of dealing with it
- Having no safe person to talk about things that might be bothering me because when I try to
with my family I get told i'm obsessing over it or i've said that loads of times already
- Accepting and dealing with: Aspergers Syndrome, ADHD and Dyspraxia
- Reliving painful thoughts or memories when feeling lonely/low
- Getting nervous or worried over things that i'm unsure about and needing a lot of explanation to not worry so much
- Finding it sometimes hard to control my frustration or anger

I know I've posted a lot already, sorry.

Keep posting if it helps Hoppery. I know this is a little late, but welcome to PC.

Only you can decide if you need to talk to a professional, but I look at it this way: if any of that list really causes you concerns, by all means talk to a professional.

Therapy may be useful to you. You could try it and see.

In my opinion, everyone can benefit from therapy as everyone has issues to work on. If you feel like it'll make you feel better, then definitely try it! If you absolutely hate therapy, don't force yourself.

Thanks to you who have replied. I'm still a bit, iffy about therapy because I just don't understand enough of my problems to know if I need it! I will mention it to my mental health nurse specialist, see what he says. I DO know that I can't go on keeping everything to myself. I've already done enough of that for 21 years! So I do realise I need some kind of support at some point and that I find talking very beneficial because of the problems that I face socially and mentally.

In my opinion, the determining factor should be how you are feeling, Hoppery.

You mentioned a list of concerns that you have in life. Personally, I feel as though that in itself means that you are wanting to go into therapy. Perhaps you're looking for someone to come up with the right words that make you feel more comfortable in your desire to get therapeutic help?

I hope that this helps you feel better in whatever decision you end up making. Very best wishes to you!

I don't know what I want :/

I don't want to keep it all in anymore. But I don't want to share it with a stranger. But I can't continue like this because it's making me angry and frustrated to the point of where I am having meltdowns more often, and I can't control when it happens. I don't know. I'm confused to what I need or even want. I just don't want to feel alone anymore and have not much support.

There are possible benefits to sharing things with a stranger rather than somebody who might feel personally upset or hurt by what you say. A good therapist will be better equipped than most other people to listen in a non-judgmental way and without letting their own feelings get in the way of helping you understand what the problem is, and how to work through it. You'll have to do the work yourself, but a good therapist can make it possible for you to do that.

I don't mean to make light of your struggles to understand what you actually want. It's hard and confusing, it really is. But you are being courageous in asking about these things here, from a bunch of strangers, and I hope that whatever decision you reach, you will feel that it was the right decision to make.

What do mental health nurses do? I've heard of them before I just don't know how they are different from other mental health professionals.

Therapy sounds like a good thing to try after reading your list. Worst that can happen is you decide you don't like it or aren't ready for it. You said you aren't sure if you know enough about your problems to talk about them but your list proves otherwise. I think those are great starting points, and therapists are trained to dive deeper than the surface issues.

It took me forever to make the decision even though I knew for a while it was something I needed to do eventually. It has to feel right and you have to be ready. You will know.

-Hope

Okay, thanks everyone.

Well, I'm guessing a mental health nurse specialist is similar to a phycratrist, but I think they might be more focused on patient care. But they can give out meds ect.. I think. Although I am not 100% sure, but from my first appointment with him, this is what it seems like.

Those are all issues that you can get support with from a therapist. I know trust is a difficult issue for you, but you don't need to reveal it all at once, and you won't be expected by the therapist to have trust. That is something that will develop as time goes on.
The list you have would be worked on piece by piece and the therapist would always try to work within your comfort level. You are in control of your therapy.

Yeah. I just don't know how the relationship with a therapist would go. I have troubles with normal relationships! Let alone with this kind of relationship. I guess if my mental health nurse specialist felt that it would be best for me to get a therapist then I would say okay. But please tell the therapist to not abandon me or get angry or give up on me because I find it hard to trust people, and by hard I mean, like it'd take me a year or more just to open up. An the therapist would probably think their time was wasted.

My experience with my current T has been that I have had a terribly difficult time trusting him, despite feeling very strongly that he is trustworthy. After a year and a half I am still not open about everything, and he knows that. He still does not think that I have been wasting his time, ever. (I've asked him about that.) Thing is, I have been waiting for this big complete change in myself where I suddenly am able to talk about anything and everything, while in reality it has been a very gradual process, with numerous small victories. One of my T's strongest beliefs is that every step forward is a hundred percent in itself; it does not have to be measured against any other progress, real or imagined.

I just wanted to put this here so you see that it's not necessarily the case that the T would feel that you ought to trust them completely at once. Many Ts don't feel that, I'm sure, because when you think about it, many of us go to therapy to get help with trust issues, and it would be strange and unnnatural for us to suddenly trust a new person completely at once.

As long as you turn up when you're supposed to, pay on time and make the effort to the best of your ability, no time is wasted.

Also the secret is finding a very well qualified therapist who understands your issues and has experience in them. But you can find out more about that once you've decided to look for a therapist.

I'm only going to get therapy if my mental health nurse specialist thinks that I need it. I wrote my issues down on paper. I told him that I find it helpful to talk. You never know, he might have some training in talk therapy as some phycratrist do and his job seems to me no different from that, apart from that he has only a little bit less authority then them. I get my treatments on the NHS.