Therapy: Personal Accountability Disguise?

Accountability: anything or anyone that helps us gain mental leverage to achieve the results we desire.

—The Accountability Stop

Seeing a mental health professional has thankfully lost the stigma it has had in the past. Modern life can put us in mental situations that are difficult to sort through alone and may be too touchy or embarrassing to talk through with friends. 

(Please, if you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis, please reach out immediately to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. These services are free and confidential.)

A therapist is someone we report back to on progress we’ve made on our mental health. We could be:

• Meditating.
• Journaling about feelings.
• Observing our own behaviors and tendencies.
• Completing specific writing or thought exercises regarding traumas in the past.

The Power of Suggestion

Ultimately, we are the only ones who can affect our mental state. Unlike a doctor who can make a physical change to our bodies, a therapist can only suggest a change to our behavior, our attitude, and our mental habits. We must enact the change ourselves. It is part of a therapist’s job to help us gain “mental leverage,” in exactly the sense we use it above to define accountability.

So what does that mean for us? To me, it means that therapy is a bit like hiring a coach for our mind. We’re stuck in thought patterns that we don’t like. So we pay someone with tools and knowledge to help us not only interrupt and change those thought patterns, but also to help us hold ourselves accountable for making the changes.

Heal Thyself?

Another possible implication is that we can choose to use another form of accountability to improve our mental health. Lots of self-help literature is available. Most of it includes exercises to complete in order to really see the benefit of the literature. I have been one of the many millions of people who read self-help books but don’t actually do the exercises and don’t apply the lessons to my life. 

Coupling self-help literature with one or more personal accountability techniques can help us make forward progress on mental health challenges. This approach may be particularly helpful when we don’t feel professional help is necessary.

Therapy is wonderful. I have visited therapists in the past and have made progress on mental issues that way. Depending on the tenacity of my thought patterns, I may see one again in the future. But in the meantime, I know accountability techniques coupled with useful mental health advice can help with smaller issues that come up.

What’s Your Account?

Do you think we can consider mental health an accountability (mental leverage) issue? Would you say visiting a therapist is like employing an accountability technique?