Mental Health Blog : Therapy Tips, Coping Tools & Insights

Therapy vs. Self-Help: Knowing When You Need More Support

Self-help has been on the rise in recent years through podcasts, books, Tik Tok videos, shared lived experiences, and tools like journaling or guided meditations. This shift in society’s perspective and the representation matter especially because self-help is often more accessible than traditional psychotherapy. It empowers people to take ownership of their own healing and for many, it becomes the first step towards change. We all know that starting is often the hardest part. Unfortunately, if self-help worked fully on its own, fewer people wouldn’t feel so stuck, while still checking off every box like reading the books, listening to the podcasts, and trying the tools. Self-help has real value, but it also has its limits and here’s how to know when it can no longer take you any further.

What Self-Help is Beneficial For

Self-help is especially effective for building a foundation. It helps people learn the language of emotions, name their experiences, and make sense of patterns they may never have had words for before. It can clarify concepts like trauma, panic attacks, emotionally immature parents, and unhealthy relational dynamics. It’s also a useful tool for skill-building such as boundary-setting, coping strategies, and providing prompts for self-reflection. Often, self-help is the “lightbulb moment” like “something isn’t right in this relationship”, “this pattern keeps repeating in my life”, “I know something needs to change, but I don’t know how yet”. Self-help strengthens insight and offers tangible tools, but does not reliably offer depth-oriented repair and long-term healing.

How to Know When Self-Help Has Taken You as Far as it Can

Self-help may have reached its limit when you’ve gained all the insights, all the reflections, and all the tools and there still isn’t much change in your behaviors. Another sign is consuming the same ideas over and over, just repackaged by different voices, but no real shift. At that point, self-help can quietly become a form of avoidance: staying in the head (cognitive mode), intellectualizing pain, and bypassing the body and emotions where healing actually happens. You may also notice that what you’re learning makes sense in theory, but hasn’t altered how you show up in real relationships. Awareness alone doesn’t rewire a nervous system. We can’t think our way or know our way out of pain that lives deeper than cognition.

Signs You Might Need More Support than Self-Help

You logically understand your patterns, but not how to shift them
You feel worse, maybe even ashamed after consuming self-help content
You feel stuck feeling burnt out, shutdown, or emotionally overwhelmed
Trauma keeps resurfacing despite your best efforts
Relationships feel confusing, draining, and/or emotionally unsafe
You’re managing your symptoms, but not healing the root causes

What Therapy Can Offer That Self-Help Cannot

Therapy provides something self-help can’t replicate, which is a real human nervous system that is regulated and attuning to you. It provides a space for co-regulation, a space where patterns can be lovingly called out and gently interrupted in real time. Therapy offers repair when there are ruptures, not just open wounds left to fester. It creates safety for all parts of you: the avoidant parts, the defensive parts, and the protective parts that learned how to survive long ago. In a consistent, nonjudgemental, accountable space, those parts no longer have to work so hard. Choosing therapy is not giving up on self-help, it’s building upon what you’ve already gained. Often, self-help becomes more effective after therapy because it’s adding to healing instead of filling an empty space.

Self-Help When Self-Help May Be Enough and When Therapy May be Needed

Self-help may be enough when you’re navigating something short-term, feel supported by your community, and notice that tools genuinely help you feel better over time. Therapy may be needed when what you’re facing feels chronic, your body reacts faster than your logic, and/or you feel alone or unsupported with what you’ve been carrying.

Support is Not a Last Resort

Needing support doesn’t mean you’ve failed, are weak, or become dependent. It means you’ve done what you could on your own and recognized when more is needed instead of suffering in silence. Your readiness is personal and pacing matters so just know that healing isn’t a race and choosing support isn’t a weakness. It’s a form of strength and maturity rooted in honesty.

Sam Villarreal, MS, LPC, LCDC

Using the Winter Solstice as a Trauma-Informed Reset

The winter solstice happens to be an organic start date for renewal, rebirth, and reframe for fresh starts and new intentions coming into the new year. That often can feel a bit pressuring for people who have trauma histories so we’ll talk about ways that you can still get that renewed start, but with a more sustainable, giving yourself permission to exist sort of way. The solstice can be seen as a way to pause, conserve energy, and rest without forcing new changes.

What is the Winter Solstice?

The winter solstice usually happens around December 21st in the Northern Hemisphere and it marks the shortest day and longest night of the year. Culturally-speaking, many traditions have used the solstice to mark a time for stillness, protection, and gratitude that life continues to grow even when it isn’t visible. Historically, it symbolizes what sustains us, endurance for the winter, and trusting that gradual change will come rather than immediate transformation.

Trauma and the Nervous System in Winter

With winter having shorter days, less daylight, and a slower pace, it can intensify the feelings of fatigue, feeling shut down, anxiety, depression, and isolation. None of these mean that you may be regressing, just that your body is responding to the reduced external stimulation. A trauma-informed approach works with your body with where it's at currently. With the winter solstice celebrating productivity and renewal, give yourself permission and acknowledgement that you do not have to earn renewal by being productive. You don’t have to be ready to make new intentions and new beginnings. Tending to your heart and trusting that light will come back gradually, literally in sunlight and figuratively in mood is a good start.

Instead of Resolutions and Reinventions, Try This

Consider having a soft reset where you reflect on all that you need, want, and need to remove going forward.

Reflect Without Judgement
- Ask yourself these questions to start with:
  1. What feels depleted lately?
  2. What have I been forcing that actually needs gentleness?
  3. What do I notice that feels uncomfortable?
Reduce outputs and inputs, don’t add new traits and personality changes
- Consider removing unnecessary strain
  1. What is one obligation you can pause and step back from?
  2. What is one expectation you can lower?
  3. What is one relational boundary that you can reinforce?
Choose warmth and sustainability over growth
- While growth often is full of discomfort, there can be a line where you surpass that discomfort and it becomes intolerable. Ask yourself “what helps my body feel safer, warmer, and more grounded?”
  1. It might be earlier bedtimes
  2. It might be rewatching familiar shows
  3. It might be eating heartier foods
  4. It might be limiting social activities that deplete rather than recharge

If you measure progress by how different you feel, you might end up missing the micro moments that signal big shifts. You might miss that you rest a little easier, you recover faster after being stressed, and that you choose yourself more often than before.

A Simple Practice to Try

Dim the lights or light a candle
Soften your gaze or close your eyes
Place a hand on your heart and belly while feeling your belly rise and soften when breathing
Name one thing that you’re letting go of or not forcing any longer
Name one way that you’ll protect your energy this winter

Remember, rest is not a reward, it is a requirement. You are allowed to slow down. You are allowed to need less. You are allowed to begin again without announcing it. The light will return, you do not have to chase it.

Sam Villarreal, MS, LPC, LCDC

Holiday Boundaries for People Who Were Never Allowed to Have Them

If you grew up in a family where boundaries were foreign, the holidays can feel extra tense. Old wounds can flare up, guilt becomes the main feeling, and suddenly you’re doing things you swore you were done with like overly pleasing people and feeling responsible for other people’s emotions. Here are some simple ways to navigate holiday gatherings when you’re still learning that the word “no” doesn’t make you a bad person.

Notice the patterns you automatically fall back into when around family and pick one pattern to interrupt. Just one interruption is enough.
1. Like saying yes before you even check in with yourself
2. Feeling emotionally responsible for everyone else
3. Making yourself smaller to avoid conflict
4. Compensating for childhood power dynamics
Set one single boundary, not 10. Start small and start with what matters most to you.
1. “I can come, but I’m leaving at 8 pm.”
2. “I’m not talking about whether or not I’ll have kids.”
3. “I won’t be drinking this year and I’m not open to discuss it.”
Expect discomfort when feelings of guilt and tension arise. It doesn’t mean you made the wrong decision, it just means that historically you’ve been the “easy one” and you’re disrupting the default dynamics.
1. Their discomfort does not mean you need to reverse the boundary you set
2. Your anxiety does not mean you’re doing something wrong
3. Default dynamics will try to pull you back in, so anticipate it, but don’t enable it
Have a backup plan for when you need to step away to ground yourself
1. Let a friend know that if you message them during this date around this time that you are in need of their support to help with grounding
2. Step outside to re-regulate
3. Take a longer bathroom break and sit on the ground to breathe
4. Reassure yourself by acknowledging the guilt and that you’re taking care of yourself in this way
Practice authenticity and honesty, but in a simple and clear way.
1. “I won’t be able to make it this year, but hopefully next year.”
2. “I’m not discussing that right now.”
Aftercare, aftercare, aftercare! Boundary-setting is hard so take time to review and reward yourself afterward.
1. What went better than I expected?
2. Where did I sell myself short?
3. What do I want to keep practicing?
4. What does my body need from me right now?

If you end up trying some of these, just know that building internal safety takes time and practice makes progress.

Sam Villarreal, MS, LPC, LCDC