“I first saw a therapist a few years after my mom passed away and absolutely hated it. She just sat there and listened to me talk; she didn’t give me the guidance or fix I was looking for. It was lots of “How does that make you feel?” and “what do you think you should do?” I quit therapy quicker than I quit the intense spinning gym I only joined because there was a shockingly good deal on Groupon.”

Michael Musi is an actor, writer and producer whose miniseries Something Undone is streaming on CBC Gem.

Family therapy: To get the mental healthcare I needed, I had to break my traditional mindset

In his opinion article Michael tells his own story, but it can easily be your story as well. During and after his mothers death from pancreatic cancer, he started having panic attacks and supressed and denied his mental illness. What do we learn from his experience:

1. Denial

Evan though the ER doctor correctly diagnosed his panic attack, like many men and women, Michael pushed his pain down and told himself he was handling it like a man, and soldiered on without getting help. Only 1 in 3 people suffering from major depression get help. It always surprised me how people with severe anxiety can hide their panic attacks from others in denial of their mental illness. Michael took eight years to really get help, but only after his marriage failed and the pain just increased – eventually he acknowledging that he needed professional help.

2. Resistance/aversion to psychotherapy

Like Michael, many people take on societies aversion to psychotherapy, and this negation of the value of psychotherapy is often ingrained by family attitudes and values. The stigmatization of mental illness and the treatment thereof, remains a big concern. It prevents people to openly talk about their illness and getting the help they need – help that is available.

3. Wrong expectations of therapy

Counselees often come with an expectation that the counsellor will give them advice and “fix” them or their problem. The microskill to come alongside clients and help them find their own solution, and to buy into “fixing” themselves,  is one of the most difficult to teach student-counsellors. The need for effective psychoeducation – informing people what counselling is and what they can expect, still remains an essential component of each counsellors work.

4. Incompetent therapist

This is one of my soapbox issues – counsellors must be competent and they must be effective. When a client has overcome their resistance to counselling and makes that first appointment – if the counsellor fails to immediately start building a therapeutic relationship with that specific client, we set back clients treatment and often loose them – they don’t come back, and the seldom take a change on a next therapist.  Michael writes “I quit therapy quicker than I quit the intense spinning gym I only joined because there was a shockingly good deal on Groupon.” How sad, if people do not feel helped, why should they go for therapy?

Michael concludes: “Eventually, in Julian, I found a practitioner who makes therapy feel like a conversation rather than a session. He knows when to shift gears or stay put when we need to dig deeper. Most importantly, he lets me make jokes – laughs at them, even – while ultimately helping me understand why I’m making them in the first place. And all the noise I filled my head with has started to go away.”

5. Find a therapist – don’t delay treatment

It is an uncomfortable reality that there are far too many incompetent therapist and counsellors out there. Add too this that there are 400+ counselling-psychology theories and that counsellors get to choose the one they like, and you end up with the fact that finding the correct therapist for you, is just not easy. Michaels realised this:  “It became clear to me that I needed professional help, but I couldn’t shake the disappointment of that first visit to a therapist. But then a good friend told me that finding the right therapist is like dating: you have to meet with a few before you find one you actually like. I thought: Who has that kind of time?

In conclusion, Michael says: ” It may have taken me eight years to get here … I hope others like me … who grew up believing that therapy wasn’t for me, or that mental health wasn’t worth talking about – get here sooner than I did.”