Why Therapy

Why Therapy? Simple. It works.

The providers at Today’s Ideal You have worked with a plethora of clients and helped them to achieve their goals. They are now living happy, fulfilling lives.

Jane* and Ava* are two people who got help and changed their lives through therapy.

Jane – a middle-aged department supervisor experiencing depression.

After a serious car accident, Jane was homebound and depressed. She struggled to cope with the sudden changes and the frustrating reality of needing to rely on others for help and support. She felt like a burden and struggled with anger. The situation wasn’t fair! The other driver went through a red light and changed Jane’s life forever.

She had been in counseling before and recognized she needed to recover emotionally as well as physically. Each session was focused on developing new strategies to help her cope. Over time, she found acceptance of her situation and began to have hope and a deeper appreciation. Her focus changed to what she had and not what she had lost.

As her physical and emotional healing improved, the focus shifted again toward renewing Jane’s relationships – with family, friends, and church members. After the accident, those relationships had become strained or distant.

With coaching and reassurance from her counselor, she worked through the challenges of needing to ask for and accept help. Jane started inviting friends and family to visit and became active again in her Bible study and weekly church services. Feeling okay about asking for and receiving help got Jane out of the house more, which allowed her to be around the people she loves more, which was a big part of easing her depression.

Jane’s depression was under control, and she had a totally new outlook on life. She was again full of hope and had set her sights on returning to work and living a happy and fulfilling life.

Ava – a 27-year-old registered nurse experiencing guilt and grief.

Ava lost her older sister to suicide two years before she connected with her counselor. Ava struggled with feelings of guilt and self-doubt. “How had she missed that her sister was sad?!” Ava never thought her sister would ever do anything to harm herself. With so many of her own painful feelings, Ava had begun to withdraw from her relationship with her friends and co-workers and stopped going for walks with her dog, yoga and playing her cello.

She worked with her counselor to understand her guilt. She felt like she had to hide what had happened, even from her closest friends and colleagues at the hospital, because of the stigma of suicide.

Dealing with her grief was a process like peeling back an onion. As we went deeper into the heart of the issue, it brought out more feelings, some unexpected. Despite the challenges, she stuck with the work of processing the loss and guilt with her counselor, and over time, she began to feel better. She was able to accept that she was not responsible for the actions of others and was not the cause of her sister’s actions.

Focus shifted away from the trauma of losing her sister and toward improving herself. She began to implement relaxation techniques, worked on being present in the moment, and started to engage in yoga and daily walks again. She felt confident and free enough to try new things and was open to those around her.

One of the final things she did with her counselor’s support was making a plan to talk with her closest work colleague and her boss about her sister’s death. They responded with empathy and kindness; Ava was relieved to move past that final hurdle.

During her last counseling session, she kept saying, “I feel so much better!” Ava became an advocate for mental health and for herself.

*Jane and Ava are not real clients. Their stories are composites of clients with whom we’ve worked.