The Gym For Your Mental Health

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• As we’re fond of saying when it comes to Psychology Sunday: mental health is also just health!

  • In this respect, going to therapy is much like going to the gym, and is generally a good practice

  • However, not all therapists (or therapeutic approaches) are created equal

  • Furthermore, your own needs may differ wildly from somebody else’s

  • Prefer keeping things to yourself? Self-therapy is entirely an option too

  • Today’s main feature takes the position that “knowledge is power”, and aims to empower you with the best possible starting point, if you’re thinking that therapy might help you

• Hydration is a critical and often-neglected part of good health, and healthy habits are (by science!) best picked-up when they’re made more convenient and easy.

  • Today’s sponsor, Hint Water, are offering 10almonds subscribers 45% off and free shipping, on their already very reasonably-priced flavored waters and vitamin waters

    • They are, by the way, free from sugar and artificial sweeteners, so these are different from ones you’ve probably tried before

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

10-Minute Abs Workout (No Equipment Needed)

Patty gives us a great 10-minute do-it-together abs workout, in sets of 30 seconds exercise, 30 seconds rest:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

💬 MAIN FEATURE

Getting The Most Out Of Therapy

If you’ve never had therapy, what image do you have of it? Perhaps you imagine a bearded and bespectacled man in a suit, impassively making notes on a clipboard. Perhaps you imagine an empathetic woman, with tissues and camomile tea on standby.

The reality is: the experience of therapy can vary, a lot.

In its results, too! Sometimes we may try therapy and think “well that was a waste of time and money”. Sometimes we may try therapy and it’ll change our life.

So… Is there any way to make it less of a lottery?

First: knowledge is power

And while the therapist-client relationship certainly shouldn’t be a power struggle, you do want to be empowered.

So, read about different styles of therapy, and also, read some how-to guides for self-therapy. We’ve recommended some before in previous editions of 10almonds; you can check those books out here:

• How to Be Your Own Therapist: Boost your mood and reduce your anxiety in 10 minutes a day – by Owen O’Kane

• You Are the One You've Been Waiting For: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships – by Dr. Richard Schwartz

• DBT Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide to Dialectical Behavior Therapy – by Sheri van Dijk

• How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self – by Dr. Nicole LaPera

This will serve two purposes:

• You’ll know what to expect out of a therapist

• You can more efficiently “get to work” in therapy

It also, of course, could help you already, without even going to therapy!

Second: begin with the end in mind

A person who does not know what they want to get out of therapy, will likely not get much out of therapy. Or rather, their first task will be to figure that out. So, figure it out in advance, if you can.

Maybe you have a problem that has a specific name, for example poor self-esteem, anxiety, stress, depression, trauma, neuroticism, phobia, etc.

This isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous, and in this case you don’t want a lifetime of “Hello, my name is ______ and I have ______”, if you can help it.

So, what do you want?

• Maybe you want to be able to go to social events without feeling anxious

• Maybe you want your relationship(s) to be more secure and fulfilling

• Maybe you want to no longer have nightmares about that traumatic thing

• Maybe you want to be able to greet each day’s tasks with confidence and without overwhelm

…etc.

A good therapist will help you to set such goals (if you haven’t already), and attain them.

If you’re going the self-therapy route, then this is your job now!

It will probably start with the question: imagine that everything currently troubling you is now healed.

What would that look like, to you?

Third: get a good match for you

Unless you are going entirely the self-therapy route (which can work for some), you will want a therapist who’s a good match for you.

It may take a degree of “suck it and see” trial runs before you find the right one, but that takes time and money, so you’ll want to streamline the process as much as you can. If you do this well, you may be able to find a good therapist for you first time.

For this, personal recommendations (such as from friends) may help more than exmaining academic and institutional affiliations.

Yes, you want a well-qualified therapist who is a member in good standing of a respectable regulated body… but whether your therapist is easy for you to “get on with” will matter at least as much as whether their approach is psychodynamic, or 4th wave CBT, or IFS, or whatever seems popular in your time and place.

Bear in mind:

• Some therapists are specialized in helping with some kinds of things and not others. It will obviously help if the therapist you choose is specialized in the thing you are seeking help for.

• Some therapists may be able to relate to you better (or not), based on simple factors of who they are. To this end, while your therapist certainly doesn’t have to be a mirror image of you, factors like age, gender, race, etc can be relevant and may be worth considering, depending on what you are seeking help with, and what factors impact that thing.

Prefer keeping things to yourself?

Therapy isn’t for everyone, but having a good relationship with oneself definitely is. You might want to invest in one of the books whose reviews we linked above, and you might also get value from previous Psychology Sunday articles, which you can find in our archive (every seventh edition here has a Psychology Sunday main feature):

Click Here To Check Out The 10almonds Archive

To borrow the catchphrase of Dr. Kirk Honda (a therapist and therapy educator with decades of experience):

❝Take care of yourself, because you deserve it; you really, really do.❞

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

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Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Study finds inverse correlation between dietary magnesium intake and peripheral arterial disease

• Culinary medicine: dietary approaches to chronic disease

• "Forever chemicals" found in tampons, period underwear, and more

• Low-risk, long-term cancer survivors more likely to die of non-cancer causes, study shows

• Leprosy in Florida: How worried should we be?

• Study finds adults with heart disease less likely to use health tracking apps

• Raising awareness of Long Covid "blue legs" symptom

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less – by Dr. James Hamblin

Our skin is our largest organ, and it's easy to forget that, and how much it does for us. All things considered, it's good to take good care of it! But what if we sometimes take too much "care" of it?

Dr. James Hamblin, a medical doctor-turned-writer, has explored this a lot both personally and in research. Through such, he has come to the conclusion there's definitely a "sweet spot" of personal hygiene:

• Too little, and the Bubonic plague sweeps through Europe, or other plagues sweep through other places when European invaders came.

• Too much, and we strip our skin of one of its greatest qualities: the ability to protect us.

Dr. Hamblin asks (and answers) such questions as:

• What is good hygiene, and what is neurotically doing ourselves multiple levels of harm because advertising companies shamed us into doing so?

• Is it good or bad to use a series of products, each to undo the problem caused by the previous?

• What the difference between a 5-step skincare routine, and a series of gratuitous iatrogenic damage?

• Which products clean us most helpfully, and which clean us most harmfully?

• How often should we bathe/shower, really?

If the book has a weak point, it's that it's written mostly with his body in mind. That makes a difference when it comes to hairwashing, for example. He's a white guy with short hair. If you're black and/or have long hair, for example, your haircare needs will be quite different. Similarly, many women engage in shaving/depilation in places that most men don't, and the consequences of that choice (and implications for any extra washing needs/harms) aren't covered.

Bottom line: notwithstanding the aforementioned blind-spots, this book will help readers reduce the amount of harm we are doing to our bodies with our washing routines, without sacrificing actual hygiene.

Click here to check out Clean and help your skin to help you!

Wishing you a peaceful Sunday,

The 10almonds Team