Cultivating mental health builds confidence

This article appeared in the January 6 edition of The Barrie Examiner as the latest entry of Johnny Glanville's THE INSTRUCTOR column. It is an article about the benefits of therapy, especially as a preventative means. One of my favorite moments of being a tennis coach is the moment at the end of someone’s first lesson. So often they ask, “Why did I wait so long to take lessons?” and “Why doesn’t everyone try this?” I love witnessing them experience the high from the dawning realization that they no longer have to figure it out on their own.

I too felt this same high when I sought out personal therapy for the first time. I remember how good I felt walking out from that session and how many of my beliefs about it had been changed. From that point everything in my life began to improve, my relationships, my career, and my sporting life because I was taught how interconnected it all is. I too wondered why doesn’t everyone try therapy? Why do we always wait until we need help to get it? Why don’t we see mental health the same way as physical health and practice prevention?

The interesting thing about tennis lessons and therapy is that even if the tips don’t work (many don’t), just the feeling of knowing that someone with more experience and knowledge is working on your behalf, someone who is essentially in your corner gives you confidence. And in all things confidence is king, it’s the alpha and the omega, with it anything is possible, without it you’re doomed.

My students may think it’s my instruction that is making them better, but its not, it’s their increased level of belief, where they doubted they now believe because they’re not gambling with their guesses anymore, they’re gambling with mine and mine they trust. It’s the placebo effect in action, and in my experience a perceived change is just as effective as actual change and sometimes more because perception is an internal entity, or in other words it’s the first domino in a very long, winding, and complex line.

Soon after I began therapy I tried out for a local baseball team in Australia. I thought I wasn’t good enough because all I had in baseball experience was one season of high school. But I made the team and after a month of hitting and catching everything that came my way I got called up to play for the Queensland Academy of Sport. Before therapy I would have felt undeserving and thought the call up was out of desperation. But instead I learned (which takes a long time and is not as simple as a therapist telling you so) to see myself as someone with of talent.

So why do so many not try therapy? Well besides the cost and geography, which can be solved (government assistance and online therapy exists) every other reason is based on fear and ignorance. There is a stigma that is associated with mental illness and discrimination toward those who suffer from it and there are horror stories born from bad science. For me it was because I thought it was an admission of insanity. The irony; all the reasons not to go are disproven when you go.