Therapy is an essential tool — on its own and alongside interventional mental health treatments like ketamine, TMS and stellate ganglion blocks.
Psychotherapy, or talk therapy, is exceptionally well-established and effective for all manner of mental health concerns and general mental health maintenance. It is often the starting point, can always be combined with other treatments, and can often extend or improve results from other treatments. Therapy can be exceptionally valuable when used to extend gains from other treatments such as interventional treatments for mood disorders – including ketamine, stellate ganglion blocks, nitrous oxide, and TMS.
Therapy matters
- Therapy can help process changes from interventional treatments.
- Therapy can help extend the results from interventional treatments.
- Therapy can take advantage of neuroplasticity from interventional treatments.
- Therapy is a useful tool on its own.
- Therapy is a fundamental tool in understanding ourselves and improving our mental health.
- Therapy comes in a variety of forms and there is likely a good fit for you and your situation.
Therapy can be integral to helping us understand our motivations, our thought processes, the relationships in our lives, how to set goals, and how to respond to life around us while focusing on what comes next in moving forward. Talk therapy can be especially helpful for investigating our past and seeing how it influences our current day and future.
It may be possible to make positive changes to your mental health without using therapy -– whether you are relying on medications alone, or interventional treatments alone, or perhaps no structured care at all –- but you’re almost certainly better off with it as an important tool for specific and general mental health improvements.
Where Should I go For Therapy?
In-person therapy can be especially helpful, as it allows for all the benefits of nonverbal communication. Your therapist can see if you are tensing your feet, or tensing your jaw, or are looking away. Similarly, you can see when your therapist is emphasizing an important point with their body language, or quietly encouraging you to elaborate on an important point.
We’d generally recommend in-person therapy whenever possible.
Telehealth therapy may be the next best option. With telehealth, the real person who is focused on your specific concerns and the details of your health may be able to provide personalized and actionable support, even if they are not in the same room as you.
Other types of therapy have their place. Group classes, online courses and AI therapy solutions can all be useful. In general, some therapy is better than none.
Whenever pursuing therapy, look for evidence-based approaches and providers with appropriate credentials from reputable organizations.
What Kind of Therapy Is Right For Me?
There is an alphabet soup of different kinds of therapy, and it is almost all useful.
You might try an approach and switch if need be. If you’ve done Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and want to move on for any number of reasons, you might try Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Internal Family Systems (IFS) or Jungian. These many different kinds of therapy have different things to offer.
Certain kinds of therapy may be better suited for certain conditions or concerns. A good place to start can be the kind of therapy that looks most interesting to you. Try one, and don’t be afraid to try others. Pursuing treatments, and continuing to pursue treatments until you find an approach and provider combination that work for you is likely to be a good strategy –- and along the way, you can benefit from the different tools from different approaches.
How long should I pursue therapy?
Patients can have different kinds of relationships with their therapist. Long-standing relationships with therapists can be wonderful. A therapist can really get to know you and know your problems, and is also able to catch you in moments where many of us may do things to protect our egos that aren’t in our best interest. A long-standing relationship with a therapist allows them to recognize those moments and help you work through them.
Short-term, problem-focused relationships with therapists can also be wonderful too. Patients can work with their therapist with a solutions-based approach to therapy, where you work on one problem and have a timeline or deadline for your therapy and move on from there.
A Little Bit Every Day
One thing we recommend to all of our patients, regardless of whether they are in a great therapeutic relationship and especially if they are not, is to engage with therapy a little bit every day through podcasts, books, audiobooks, videos, online courses, and whatever other way is accessible to them.
It’s so easy to compartmentalize your therapy to “Wednesdays at 3:00-4:00 in the afternoon,” and to avoid implementing things from therapy throughout your daily life. Engaging with therapeutic tools and ideas every day is a way to bring incremental improvement throughout your life, which can add up over time.
It also serves as something to remind you that improving your mental health is a priority and it is accessible.
Life gets so busy that it’s easy to say “I just don’t have time for this today,” “I’m busy,” “I’m traveling,” “I’m working,” “I have a family,” “I’m so busy” and to put therapy on the back burner.
It is easy to see when you’ve been neglecting your physical health — you’ll see yourself get weaker, you’ll see your weight go up, and you’ll see your chronic medical problems get worse over time. As with physical health, it is important to focus on your mental health a little bit every day.
Just as you wouldn’t expect to exercise once and be fit, or expect to weed the garden once and to have a beautiful garden, it is important to take a little bit of care of your mental health every day. Trying various forms of therapy, picking up pieces of each different kind of therapy that work particularly well for you, and engaging with therapeutic ideas every day is a great way to keep things fresh and interesting while maintaining your mental health.
About Us
Wells Medicine is a Houston-based practice designed to provide meaningful care for mental health. Providing targeted interventional treatments for Depression, Anxiety, OCD, PTSD and other conditions, with Ketamine Treatments, Stellate Ganglion Blocks, TMS, and Nitrous-Oxide Treatments. Focused on comprehensive care and integration with Psychiatry, Psychology, and Support Services. We are evidence-based, patient-focused and mission-driven.
The content here is for informational purposes and should not be relied upon for medical decisions. For the details of your specific medical conditions and treatments consult your doctors or other qualified healthcare professionals.
