As kids, we denied visiting the doctor. Our parents and guardians used to just pick us up, put us on the shoulder and walk to the doctor. Our behavior was generally temper tantrums and anger outburst. The reason is, as kids, our experience with the doctor is having a pattern which built a belief.
Stimulus 1: Visiting the doctor.
Stimulus 2: Doctor injects vaccine.
Emotion 1: Before injection – uncertain.
Emotion 2: After injection – sad and angry, shame.
Cause (injection – unpleasant stimulus) leads to effect (negative impression on the doctor).
This impression will be evidently proved by the doctors during the first 7 to 10 visits to the doctor – because vaccines. It is after this, when the kid is taken to the doctor, when the doctor doesn’t give injections and prescribes medications instead, the impression on the doctors according to the child changes. This shift in the impression proves to the child that previous belief what he/she believed was wrong. Thus, the child feels free to walk in to the clinic with minimum hesitation.
Similarly, our beliefs towards “talking to therapists” is unreal because of the first impression on the therapist or therapy as a process. This is because of the social media, movies and serials that show these mental health professionals to be behaving reserved with a loaded syringe in hand and staring the mind through the patient’s eyes, giving electro convulsive therapy, hypnotizing, etc. on the other hand, they show the people who approach the psychologist or a psychiatrist to be an antisocial element or into severe psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia or a criminal or a mentally retarded.
Here is a fact. Nether of them are true. Media has wrongly educated the general population as a result of which there is a social stigma. Like how a kid understood with experience, we too should. Your experience is your best teacher. The only way to experience is either witnessing it directly or by listening to experiences from people who have witnessed it without preconceived notions.
Please feel free to meet a professional therapist because, your mental health matters.
Pavan M Srivatsa
Counselling Psychologist and Consultant Psychotherapist
Chakshu Counselling and Psychotherapy Centre, Rajajinagar
Bangalore, Karnataka, Republic Of India.
+919886622309
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