Therapy and Wellbeing
At Red Balloon, we focus on wellbeing, education and social re-engagement. We know that mental health and emotional wellbeing are essential to a happy and healthy individual. Throughout their time with us, young people are able to have counselling or therapy as part of their timetable. Counselling and therapy can help young people with problems they have been facing and support them in developing resilience against issues they may face in the future.
Today, we’re outlining some of the many reasons that therapy is good for your overall wellbeing. There is often a stigma against seeking mental health support, especially when it comes to therapy. We want to show people that there is no reason to ever be ashamed of going to therapy!
We have a wealth of knowledge here at Red Balloon thanks to our therapists who work with our young people on a daily basis. We’ve asked our experts why therapy is good for you, and why it benefits our young people so much.
Why Is Therapy Beneficial For Everyone?
Quite simply, as MIND says, therapy can “help you make sense of things and understand yourself better, it can help you resolve complicated feelings, or find ways to live with them.”
Talking therapies can be helpful for all sorts of people in lots of different situations. You may also hear them referred to as counselling, talking treatments, psychological therapies or wellbeing sessions. Talking therapy is for anyone who’s going through a difficult time or has emotions they need help working through. Therapy may help you recognise unhelpful patterns in the way you think or act, and find ways to change them (if you would like to).
For some, therapy can be more beneficial than medicine. When we talk to a qualified therapist, we are able to talk more freely than when we talk to our friends, parents or others we know. This is because we believe people we know expect something from us or perceive us in a certain way, so we don’t want to disappoint them by sharing something that may change how they view us. By talking to a therapist, we are able to express ourselves confidentially and be heard unconditionally and without judgement. A therapist may offer a different perspective, however, they do not tell us what to do or have any expectations about how or who someone is. Their acceptance gives us a safe space to explore who we are more fully, what may be troubling us and what we want.
The Student Perspective
Hi, my name is Ella!
I started to struggle attending school around Year 9 due to mental health issues and intense anxiety around entering the school building. The next couple of years were tough and I was struggling to find an educational program that worked for me. I felt completely lost and had given up all hope of ever enjoying education again.
Around two years ago my mum and I discovered Red Balloon and my whole world honestly changed for the better. The first few days were filled with nerves, but as I settled into the lessons my love for learning came back. Everyone at Red Balloon was so understanding, and friendly and made me feel as though I wasn’t alone in what I had been struggling with. I always looked forward to the lessons and learnt something new every day. Although I never met the teachers in person, it felt like I had known them my whole life. I bonded with everyone! My well-being (therapy) and mentoring sessions were incredibly helpful and they gave me the confidence needed for my integration back into school/college life with my peers. Red Balloon has been the stepping stone I needed to give me that chance to fall back in love with learning and gain the confidence needed to go back to school. I am incredibly grateful for all the support offered to me and it was the best decision I’ve ever made. After attending Red Balloon for two years I now have the confidence to go to college. I was able to get 6 GCSEs which I never thought would be possible. I am going to study psychology at college which I am really looking forward to. I can’t wait for the next step in my life at college and this would never have been possible without my journey at Red Balloon!
Ella’s mum said; “My daughter attended Red Balloon between January 2020 and July 2021. In that time, my daughter blossomed not only academically but emotionally as well…. Equally important, were the therapy and well-being sessions which my daughter benefited from. The therapists at Red Balloon worked tirelessly to restore my daughter’s faith in therapy, and as my daughter had struggled to voice her thoughts and fears verbally, typing her feelings online opened up a new and better way of communicating.”
The Most Important Element of Therapy
Many of our students find they gain something helpful from their therapy/wellbeing sessions. For some, it is a safe and confidential space to share their worries, for others it is somewhere to talk about how they are getting on with their learning. It can also be a place to vent frustrations and explore how you would like your life to be and how you might achieve this.
Therapy can take on many forms and is always facilitated at the pace the young person wants it to be. It is tailored to each individual student therefore if a student would prefer to do a wellbeing project or a short course in mindfulness or understanding anxiety, they can!
The most important element of therapy is the person choosing to have it.
