Don’t Consider Exercise as Therapy

I was talking with a fellow fitness-obsessed friend recently about how much therapy has helped me. While I wasn’t preaching the gospel of cognitive behavioral therapy to try to steer anyone to hunt it out for themselves in the event that they don’t wish to, there’s no denying that it has transformed my very own mental health for the higher.

“I don’t go to therapy because I work out a lot,” she responded. It completely caught me off guard.

Sure, understanding is useful in your mental health—the science and research clearly state this. Exercise releases neurotransmitters, notably feel-good endorphins, which increase feelings of delight and reduce feelings of pain. It also boosts dopamine, which also increases pleasure and feelings of motivation, and may also help relieve feelings of depression.

In reality, a meta-analysis published in 2016 found that exercise had a “large and significant antidepressant effect” in individuals with depression, including major depressive disorder. One other review published in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology found that exercise “has been shown to significantly reduce the symptoms of tension” because of a mixture of biological and psychological aspects. Exercise can also be a strong stress reliever. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that healthy adults who exercise often were higher in a position to handle acute stressors and develop emotional resiliency.

I’m sure that’s where my friend was coming from, that she views her gym classes as a possibility to alleviate stress and get in a positive headspace. I do know she didn’t mean to be invalidating or offensive, and I don’t even think she realized what she was saying. However it really got me fascinated with how dismissive some people can still be about therapy and what number of conflate the advantages of physical activity with the work that is done in therapy.

Although I’ve been a champion for mental health within the 12-plus years I’ve been a author, I personally have only been in therapy for 2 years. Inside that point. I’ve learned positive coping mechanisms, methods to work through the guilt and shame of my late ADHD diagnosis, what to do once I’m suffering from scary intrusive thoughts, and I’ve unpacked some unresolved feelings that I’ve held on to for years, to call just a number of positives. Truthfully, therapy has completely modified my life.

To be clear, I’m also very physically lively. I’ve been understanding consistently in a gym since I used to be 14, and in a past life, I used to be a full-time fitness editor. I lift weights about 4 days every week and do cardio one other two to 3 days every week. And I’m diligent about getting in my 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day.

I view exercise as not only something I would like to do as an adult to care for my physical health, but in addition as a tool in my arsenal to treat my mental well-being. As someone liable to depression and anxiety, I find that regular physical activity helps balance my mood and relieve a few of that anxiety.

All of that is to say—exercise is useful for my mental health, but it surely’s certainly not a alternative for therapy.

“They’re really two various things,” explains licensed therapist and board-certified behavior analyst Laurie Singer, LMFT. “Exercise is an excellent strategy to relieve stress, and it can also get you on course to utilize the strategies that you just’re using in therapy. However it is different than therapy.”

Singer says that she at all times recommends physical activity as a part of a treatment plan for her clients. It is dependent upon their abilities and the way much time must exercise, but she says she typically encourages them to work out not less than 4 times every week.

“[Exercise] relieves that tension, that stress,” she says. “It boosts your physical and mental energy… It enhances your well-being all from those endorphins. Is not that tremendous?”

The very best part is that you just don’t must pay for pricey gym classes or use fancy equipment to get those advantages. Lacing up a pair of walking shoes and going for a brisk walk is free—anything that gets your body moving and your heart rate up goes to be useful.

Still, physical activity isn’t therapy. Give it some thought: While you would possibly feel higher mentally after a workout, Singer points out that you would experience intrusive thoughts while exercising or you would possibly ruminate on worst-case scenarios—which could keep coming back for those who don’t cope with them head-on. A therapist can offer an out of doors perspective and tools to aid you cope with distressing situations. For instance, Singer says she often helps patients manage their anxiety, especially around catastrophizing or coping with the handfuls of “what-ifs” all of us experience. She can also offer solutions around communication issues people is likely to be experiencing of their relationships—belongings you won’t get from a HIIT class.

Conflating regular exercise with clinical mental health treatment might just boil right down to misconceptions around therapy. While it’s turn out to be more acceptable to speak about therapy in recent times, there continues to be a lot that’s misunderstood. For example, therapy isn’t just lying on a couch in a psychologist’s office and crying about your childhood (although, no shade to individuals who use their therapy sessions that way!). There are a number of therapy modalities that therapists utilize, similar to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, to call a number of.

And while I’ve been exercising often for 20 years, it wasn’t until I began seeing my therapist that I noticed a dramatic shift in my mental health. Running gave me energy, but it surely didn’t help me cope with feelings of guilt and shame. Lifting weights helped relieve some stress, but it surely didn’t help me learn to be a greater communicator. And while I definitely feel higher mentally after a troublesome spin class, it doesn’t erase my depression, anxiety, or intrusive thoughts.

Singer says that, together with therapy and medicine if individuals are prescribed it, caring for your mental health also requires other lifestyle aspects like eating well, getting enough sleep, not drinking an excessive amount of alcohol, and yes, exercise. As Sepideh Saremi, LCSW, running therapist and founding father of Run Walk Talk told Well+Good in 2020, “It isn’t good to be too reliant on one tool.”

That’s just the strategy I imagine in—I do know my mental health requires a diligent 360-degree approach. But that doesn’t prevent people from making off-color comments.

“If any person does say, ‘Well, I need not go to therapy because I exercise’” suggests Singer, “I’d say, ‘That’s great that exercise helps you, it’s creating those endorphins… for those who ever do need [therapy], let me know, I actually have an excellent therapist.’”