I hope that everyone had a very merry Christmas! I am looking forward to a new year filled with self-growth and development. I have recently embarked on a new adventure in my own journey of development from a psychological perspective. Earlier in this past year, I decided to use the services provided by UWF’s partnered businesses to get a psychological evaluation, just to see what was going on in this noggin’ of mine. Turns out, I have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which typically play off of one another. That being said, these emotional functioning issues should not cause too much concern. They are just some things I can now work on through either medication or therapy. I am choosing the therapy route to begin with to see if that will help me enough that I will not have to take medication. Either way, I have managed these disorders for this long, so I know it will only improve with therapy.
The field of psychology is growing every day, and honestly, it excites me to see that. If you have read my column for a while, you have heard of the mental health struggles in the athletic community, and those struggles are present everywhere. However, entering something like therapy, or using techniques such as journaling or painting, can help you learn to manage those differences that may be present in your psyche. Some say therapy is a scam, but I say that therapy is what you make of it. Since UWF offers free therapy, I am 100 percent going to take advantage of that while I can and go into it with a “can do” attitude. Besides, there’s no point in looking down on psychological services such as therapy if you haven’t tried it yourself with intent.