People take help of psychotherapy to overcome their problems and feel better. But, many people have this common question in their mind that “psychotherapy is just a talking session, then how it can retrain the mind to feel better?”
Due to this doubt, many people don’t even go to psychologists thinking that it will be a waste of their time and money. On the other hand, some people buy psychotherapy books thinking that getting the advice of psychologist is same as reading it from a book.
To cut this confusion, we will explain today how psychotherapy retrains the brain to expect and feel better. After reading this, you will surely understand the importance of psychotherapy in this whole process. You can also find many online psychologists in India for psychotherapy.
Now, let’s find out the answer to our question through a series of other questions:
Why Visiting Psychologist is Important to Retrain the Brain?
Psychotherapy is not only related to problem-solving. During psychotherapy, changes occur on a deeper and subconscious level which only the patient can experience. The relationship which we have with our psychologist changes lots of things in our brain.
It happens because the human brain always evolves unconsciously through the relationships. For example, people who experience abusive relationships in their early life tend to expect only pain from future relationships as well. Due to this, they always feel fear, anxiety or depression.
Now, when such people meet their psychologist, they remain a little bit distant and anxious. After a few sessions, they understand that this therapeutic relationship is far better than their early relationships. So, they come across a new side of relationships; which affect their brain in a good way.
How Human Brain has Evolved?
To understand this in a better manner, we will have a close look at our brain. The brain has three parts that signify different phases of evolution. The first part is the reptilian brain which controls vital body functions such as breathing. Next comes limbic brain; which is responsible for dealing with our emotions and behavior.
The last one is neocortex, which takes care of higher-order functions like thoughts, language, and reasoning. When someone takes the advice from their loved ones or psychologists, they ask for a neocortical solution which can be rationally implemented. But, most of these people have histories of painful or abusive relationships that cause changes in the limbic part of their brain.
These changes can only be altered by a new positive relationship instead of just some solutions. That’s why the psychologist builds a relationship with the patient instead of giving any advice or solution.
How Our Early Life Experiences Affect Our Brain?
Our emotions are formed by our brain so that we can survive in this world. Our limbic brain starts to create emotions based on our early life experiences. When someone behaves badly with us, our brain instructs us to feel angry about it, and we feel so. In the same way, when someone rejects us, our brain makes us feel sad.
When we are young, we usually remain in a small social circle that only consists of our family, relatives and a few friends. We are highly dependent on our parents for survival and development of emotions.
Now, if a child is always punished badly for showing anger on certain things, then his mind will pair up anger with pain. After this unconscious pairing, that person will feel anxious instead of angry on every situation on which requires anger, even in his adulthood.
This happens because the limbic brain of such people has evolved to think that anger will be followed by pain. To save these people from that pain, their brain makes them anxious instead of angry. This regular anxiety of getting angry and feeling the pain will disturb their mental peace as well as future relationships.
How Psychotherapy will Retrain the Brain in Such Situations?
A new and healthy therapeutic relationship helps a person in retraining their limbic system. In starting, when such people will try to show the suppressed emotions, they will get the same programmed reaction which is anxiety in this case.
But, their psychologist will ensure them that they won’t get any pain if they will openly express their suppressed anger. Bit by bit, they will start expressing this suppressed emotion, anger in this case, in front of their psychologist.
As they will get positive reactions like sympathy instead of negative ones from the psychologist after expressing their suppressed emotions, the misconception of their limbic system will start to fade.
This happens in psychotherapy because the therapist will re-create that situation in which they were dependent on the other person for their needs and then, provide a positive experience which will help in retraining their brain gradually.
How these Positive Experiences will Alleviate Psychological Problems?
These new positive experiences will allow the person to express any of the emotions like anger, sadness or disappointment without any barrier. This free expression of emotions will diminish the anxiety or depression that the patient was earlier feeling because of suppressing his emotions.
It will make the future relationships of that healed person better because he will no longer feel that he should take the mistreatment without showing anger or sadness and he will be able to easily convey what he is feeling to others.
The wall which his mind created unconsciously between his emotions and other people due to his past experiences will be broken after the positive experiences with the psychologist. In this way, he will be able to combat any type of anxiety, depression or other syndromes.
So, you must have understood by now that psychotherapy is more than just getting solutions to your problem by a professional. The right psychologist can change your whole life and ward off your psychological problems.
The psychologist will do so not by giving your suggestions, but by building a right relationship with you. So, book appointment with any online psychologist of India today!