Therapy isn’t just for dealing with a crisis. It can be helpful whether someone is struggling with mental health challenges, experiencing high levels of stress, or simply wants to gain more self-knowledge. In each case, therapy can empower people with new skills and tools as they take on the changes and stressors associated with any stage of life.
Throughout life, we can all experience challenging transitions, struggles with mental health, or simply the need to check in with ourselves. From a teenager who is finding their way in the world to an adult with work-related stress and anxiety, therapy provides a safe space for us to work through it. Self-care involves prioritizing mental health; with the support of an expert, you can improve your current mindset and build healthy habits for the future.
A therapist acts as a neutral yet supportive party who listens, offers guidance, and teaches life skills tailored to each person’s needs. Therapy can help people of all ages find the strength, confidence, and joy that already likely lie within them.
The Benefits of Therapy for Anyone at Any Age
Whether you’re a parent who is looking for support for your child or an adult looking to start therapy for the first time, we often hear the question, “What does someone get out of treatment?” Understanding what you or a loved one will be learning can be the key to making the first step in getting mental health support.
Considering therapy can be intimidating, but it doesn’t need to be—it is one of the most courageous things you can do. For many people, it has been life-changing, affecting every aspect of their well-being, including physical health.
Ready to start therapy or make a referral? You can call our experts at 952-826-8475 any time to get started. Whether you have questions, need to access a no-cost mental health screening, or want to make a referral over the phone, we are here to help.
5 Essential Tools Learned in Therapy
Below are five powerful tools for anyone at any stage of life. These therapeutic skills can help people navigate life during treatment and build healthy habits that equip them with the tools to succeed.
1 – Self-Awareness
Being self-aware means understanding and focusing on yourself. Self-awareness includes one’s personality, actions, values, beliefs, emotions, and thoughts. Building self-awareness means being more honest with yourself and working through life’s difficulties. It could include identifying negative thought patterns and using healthier coping mechanisms instead.
For younger people, developing self-awareness can take time and maturity. Even though teens think about themselves and how they appear, they usually can’t observe themselves without judgment. In therapy, children and teens can build an awareness of who they are and what they believe in to reach their goals and thrive in the future.
Even though adults are developmentally more self-aware than younger people, they can struggle just as much. Many older people can start to feel “stuck” in life or have feelings of unhappiness. Self-awareness allows you to investigate these unwanted feelings and work toward what may be causing them. Without building this essential skill, people can become more anxious and stressed as they continue to repress feelings that are telling them something deep down.
2 – Emotional Self-Regulation
Emotional regulation means learning to manage difficult emotions, like stress and frustration, productively and thoughtfully, rather than allowing them to have free rein over one’s mind and actions. Moreover, it means learning to channel positive emotions, like excitement and love, in healthy ways.
Teenagers experience immense changes in physical, hormonal, and developmental stages, often manifesting as the all-too-familiar emotional teen. Hence, it’s the perfect time for them to learn the skills to regulate their emotions in a healthy way rather than turning to harmful habits such as substance use. Therapy has been shown to reliably improve teens’ emotional regulation, and help them build skills such as problem-solving, seeking help when needed, persistence in long-term goals, and more.
Self-regulation is also vital for adults, especially when balancing full-time work, a family, or other life stressors. Poor self-regulation contributes to a lack of self-confidence in adults, which can lead to challenges with handling stress and frustration in their daily lives. Instead of letting stress build up, a person who learns self-regulation can become resilient, bouncing back from adverse situations or emotions in a productive and healthy way.
3 – Improved Motivation
Saying you will work on yourself and actually doing it are two different things. Outside of working through challenges, therapy can give people a new sense of motivation to reach their goals. Group therapy, couples therapy, or individual therapy can be a crucial component to help patients build a sense of purpose and inspiration.
Kids and teens may struggle with motivation as they take on more responsibilities. This could be anything from doing homework to applying to a part-time job or college. Therapy can help a young person identify what is interfering with their motivation and learn the skills to find purpose and inspiration in the daily tasks they need to accomplish.
Between working and keeping up with a busy family schedule, adults can start to feel the monotony of everyday life, resulting in less motivation and joy. Especially for those with mental health disorders, motivation can feel unattainable—but it’s possible. Therapy can teach them skills to keep moving forward and gives them the confidence to take control of their own lives.
4 – Relationship and Communication Skills
Building relationships and skills for communicating appropriately can help people achieve their goals at any stage of life. These skills go hand in hand with feeling connected to those around you, and also engaging with them in a healthy way.
Whether or not a teen is currently having difficulties with relationships, improving their skills in this area is one of the most essential benefits of therapy. Through this skill, teens can form authentic connections while learning about themselves. They can understand their role in a relationship, communicate effectively, and advocate for themselves when needed.
Creating positive and healthy relationships with people outside of your family is vital for young adults and older adults in every aspect of life. In therapy, adults can learn skills to form stronger connections with others, including family members, friends, partners, and colleagues. Whether you’re striving to be a productive team member at work or to feel like you belong in a community, communication skills are essential.
5 – Setting Healthy Boundaries
Learning to set boundaries is another all-important skill. It is a way of caring for yourself by creating clarity about how you want to be treated by others. Healthy boundaries help us determine what is acceptable and fits into our lives, so we can focus on necessary tasks, feel safe, and prioritize self-care.
In therapy, young people can gain this valuable skill and identify when they need to set a boundary to protect themselves. This could involve defining their boundaries with peer relationships, clearly communicating those boundaries as necessary, and setting consequences when boundaries are crossed.
Adults can have boundary issues, too. For example, they may find themselves tied up in work conversations outside their business hours, or spending time with people who drain their mental battery. Working with a mental health professional will help you determine the relationships in which you need to set boundaries—emotional, physical, and/or financial. Whether you need to set boundaries with a coworker or a significant other, you will learn to protect your well-being while nourishing positive connections that lift you up.
The Benefits of Therapy at PrairieCare
You or your loved one can start therapy at any time. You don’t need to wait until you’re in distress or in crisis. A therapist can serve as a nonjudgmental and neutral party, helping you through difficult, confusing, or triggering life situations—while giving you the gift of life-long skills.
At PrairieCare, our full continuum of care meets patients where they are in their mental health journey. Our team understands the full range of symptoms that can develop when an individual is experiencing mental health challenges. Across all our locations, we’ve built spaces and teams that allow patients to disclose their feelings and be met with empathy, support, and a plan to move forward.
We provide the following outpatient programs for people of all ages:
- Clinic and Outpatient: Offering in-person and telehealth settings, our services include specialized psychotherapy, medication management, and evaluation. We offer specialty treatment including Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), Play Therapy, Marriage and Family Therapy, Air Water Earth (AWE) Therapy, Perinatal Clinic Therapy and Psychiatry, and more.
- Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP): A level of care that meets four days a week, several hours a day, for individuals struggling with symptoms of mental illness that are interfering with their daily living and are not manageable through weekly therapy and/or medication management alone. Specialized IOP tracks include:
- Perinatal: For pregnant and postpartum people experiencing postpartum depression and other Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders
- Youth IOP: Utilizes evidence-based practices to treat youth whose mental health interferes with their daily functioning.
- Young Adult IOP: This program utilizes evidence-based practices to treat symptoms in young adults having trouble transitioning into their next stage of life.
- Adapted Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (A-DBT): An Adapted DBT approach has been shown to help those with depression and improve associated issues, such as suicidality, self-injurious behavior, emotional dysregulation, and/or struggles with interpersonal relationships.
- Partial Hospitalization Program: Takes place five days a week for a full day of programming and is helpful for adults and youth who are struggling with symptoms of depression that are interfering with their daily tasks, such as school, caring for themselves, and going to work.
Upon intake, our experts determine the appropriate care level for each patient’s individual needs and goals. And because recovering from mental health issues is not always a straight path, but we have the flexibility to adjust care when it’s needed.
Interested in Starting Therapy? Contact Our Team.
Starting therapy for the first time or even returning after some time can be intimidating. That’s why we offer a no-cost mental health screening with no strings attached. Our experts will guide you through the process and help you access the mental health care option that fits your life.
Those seeking care can call our team at 952-826-8475 any day or time to learn more about services, access a mental health screening, and start the admissions process. You can also fill out the request form below, and within one business day, a specialist from our team will contact you or your loved one to complete a screening.
Outpatient Therapy Locations in Minnesota
PrairieCare has various convenient locations throughout the Twin Cities and Southern Minnesota to provide access to needed mental health services. We provide various levels of outpatient therapy accommodate each patient’s needs.
Our locations include the following:
- Brooklyn Park, Medical Office Building
- Brooklyn Park, Inpatient Hospital
- Edina
- Mankato
- Maple Grove
- Maplewood
- Minneapolis
- Rochester
- Woodbury
We also offer flexible telehealth services to help you access therapy wherever you are most comfortable. The following programs have a telehealth option:
- Adult Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)
- Perinatal Mental Health Clinic
- Psychotherapy
- Psychiatry
- Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)
About PrairieCare
At PrairieCare, we believe that mental illness is real, common, and treatable. We provide individuals of all ages with the psychiatric care they truly need. PrairieCare is one of the nation’s largest providers of premier psychiatric services to the Twin Cities metro area, Rochester, and Mankato. Our programs and services span the full continuum of care, with the understanding that each patient has unique experiences, life stages, and needs.
Whether a child is experiencing anxiety in school, a new parent needs perinatal psychiatric services, or a teenager needs support for an eating disorder, our clinicians are accredited and highly experienced in supporting patients of all ages with a wide variety of diagnoses.