Common Mental Health Challenges and When Therapy Can Help
In last week's post we explored what mental health actually means — and why it exists on a spectrum that affects all of us, not just those with a diagnosed condition. This week we're going a step further, looking at some of the most common mental health challenges people experience, what they actually feel like from the inside, and when therapy might help.
One of the biggest barriers to seeking support is not knowing whether what you're experiencing is "serious enough" to warrant it. The honest answer is that if something is affecting your quality of life, your relationships, or your sense of self — it's serious enough. You don't need to be in crisis to deserve care.
Anxiety
Anxiety is the most common mental health challenge in Canada, yet it remains widely misunderstood. It is not simply feeling worried or stressed — though those can be part of it. Anxiety is a persistent state of physiological and psychological activation that can show up as constant worry, physical tension, difficulty sleeping, avoidance of certain situations, panic attacks, or a pervasive sense that something is wrong even when everything appears fine.
Anxiety can take many forms — generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, health anxiety, panic disorder, phobias, and more. It often co-occurs with other challenges like depression, ADHD, and trauma, making it sometimes difficult to identify clearly.
Therapy can help when anxiety is interfering with your daily functioning — when worry feels uncontrollable, when avoidance is limiting your life, or when your nervous system feels chronically on edge. Evidence-based approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), mindfulness-based therapy, and somatic approaches can be highly effective in helping you understand and work with anxiety rather than being ruled by it.
Learn more about anxiety therapy at Being and Becoming →
Depression
Depression is more than sadness. It is a pervasive shift in mood, energy, motivation, and perspective that can make even ordinary tasks feel insurmountable. People experiencing depression often describe a sense of flatness or emptiness, a loss of interest in things they used to enjoy, difficulty concentrating, changes in sleep and appetite, and a persistent inner critic that tells them things will never improve.
Depression can be episodic — arriving in response to a specific loss or life event — or it can emerge without any clear situational cause. Major depressive disorder can develop in the absence of an obvious external trigger, reflecting the complex interplay of neurobiological, genetic, and psychological factors that contribute to depression. It can also be chronic and low-grade, a condition sometimes called dysthymia that hums along in the background for years without ever quite lifting, or a feature of other conditions like bipolar disorder or seasonal affective disorder.
This is worth naming explicitly because many people dismiss or minimize their depression precisely because they can't identify a reason for it — telling themselves they have nothing to be sad about, that others have it worse, or that something must be wrong with them for feeling the way they do without an obvious cause. Depression does not always have a logical explanation. It is a clinical condition that deserves care regardless of whether there is a clear reason for it.
Therapy can help when low mood has persisted for more than a couple of weeks, when it is affecting your relationships or your ability to function, or when you find yourself withdrawing from life. CBT, Behavioural Activation, mindfulness-based approaches, and relational therapy have all been shown to be effective for depression — sometimes in combination with medication, depending on severity.
Learn more about depression therapy at Being and Becoming →
Trauma and PTSD
Trauma is not defined by the event itself but by the impact it has on the nervous system. What is traumatic for one person may not be for another — and that is not a reflection of strength or weakness. It is a reflection of context, history, support, and the particular way each nervous system processes overwhelming experience.
Trauma can show up as flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, emotional numbness, dissociation, difficulty trusting others, chronic physical tension, or a persistent sense of being unsafe even in objectively safe situations. It often co-occurs with anxiety, depression, substance use, and eating disorders — making it important to consider trauma as a potential underlying factor even when it isn't the presenting concern.
Therapy can help when the effects of past experiences are showing up in your present life — when your nervous system is stuck in survival mode, when your relationships are affected, or when you feel unable to move forward. Trauma-informed approaches like EMDR, IFS, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and somatic therapy are specifically designed to work with trauma at the level of the nervous system, not just the cognitive level.
Learn more about trauma therapy at Being and Becoming →
Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating
Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions that affect people of all genders, ages, body sizes, and backgrounds. They include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, ARFID, and a broader spectrum of disordered eating patterns that may not meet full diagnostic criteria but still significantly affect quality of life.
Eating disorders are not about food or vanity. They are complex conditions that often develop as coping mechanisms for difficult emotions, trauma, or a profound need for control in circumstances where control feels impossible. Diet culture — with its relentless messaging about weight, restriction, and the moral value of certain foods — creates fertile ground for disordered eating to develop and persist.
Signs that therapy might help include a preoccupation with food, eating, or your body that feels distressing or consuming, using food to cope with emotions, feeling out of control around eating, restricting food in ways that affect your health or daily life, or a deeply negative relationship with your body that is affecting your wellbeing.
At Being and Becoming, we take a HAES-informed, non-diet approach to eating disorder treatment, working collaboratively with our registered dietitian to provide integrated care that addresses both the psychological and nutritional dimensions of recovery.
Learn more about eating disorder therapy at Being and Becoming →
Grief and Loss
Grief is one of the most universal human experiences — and one of the most isolating. Whether you are grieving the death of someone you love, the end of a relationship, a pregnancy loss, a diagnosis, a job, or a version of your life that didn't turn out the way you hoped, grief deserves space and support.
There is no right way to grieve, and no timeline that applies to everyone. Grief does not move in neat stages. It can be nonlinear, unpredictable, and complicated by ambivalence, relief, guilt, or the particular circumstances of the loss. Ambiguous grief — grieving someone who is still alive, or grieving something that was never clearly named as a loss — can be especially difficult to process because it lacks the social recognition that more conventional losses receive.
Therapy can help when grief feels stuck or overwhelming, when it is significantly affecting your daily functioning, when you are experiencing complicated grief or traumatic loss, or simply when you need a dedicated space to process something that feels too heavy to carry alone.
Learn more about grief therapy at Being and Becoming →
Relationship and Couples Challenges
Relationships are where much of our deepest wellbeing — and our deepest pain — lives. Conflict, communication breakdowns, infidelity, growing apart, navigating major life transitions together, parenting disagreements, intimacy difficulties, and the slow erosion of connection are all common experiences that therapy can help with.
Couples therapy is not only for relationships in crisis. Many couples find it valuable as a proactive investment — a space to strengthen communication, deepen understanding, and address patterns before they become entrenched. Individual therapy can also be enormously helpful for relationship challenges, particularly when attachment patterns, past trauma, or family of origin dynamics are contributing to difficulties in current relationships.
Therapy can help when the same arguments keep repeating without resolution, when emotional or physical intimacy has diminished, when trust has been broken, when a major life event is straining the relationship, or when you simply feel disconnected from your partner and aren't sure how to find your way back.
Learn more about couples therapy at Being and Becoming →
Child and Youth Mental Health
Children and teenagers experience mental health challenges too — and the earlier those challenges are identified and supported, the better the outcomes. Young people may not have the language to describe what they are experiencing, expressing distress instead through changes in behaviour, school performance, sleep, appetite, social withdrawal, or physical complaints like stomachaches and headaches.
Common mental health challenges in children and youth include anxiety, depression, trauma responses, difficulties with emotional regulation, grief, and challenges related to identity, relationships, and the particular pressures of adolescence. Social media, academic pressure, and the lingering effects of the pandemic have added layers of complexity to the mental health landscape for today's young people.
Therapy can help when you notice significant changes in your child's mood, behaviour, or functioning, when they are expressing distress or hopelessness, when school or friendships are being affected, or when they are going through a difficult transition or experience that feels beyond what your family can support alone. Child and youth therapy is tailored to the individual — some young people prefer to talk directly, while others engage more naturally through play-based or creative approaches. Your therapist will follow your child's lead, using whatever feels most comfortable and effective for them.
Learn more about child and youth therapy at Being and Becoming →
Stress and Burnout
Stress is a normal part of life — but chronic, unrelenting stress is something different. Burnout, the state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that develops when stress accumulates beyond our capacity to recover, has become increasingly common and is now recognized as a serious concern that deserves proper attention and care.
Burnout can develop in response to work demands, caregiving responsibilities, chronic illness, financial pressure, or simply the cumulative weight of trying to manage too much for too long. It often presents as exhaustion that doesn't lift with rest, emotional detachment or cynicism, reduced effectiveness, and a loss of meaning or purpose in areas of life that used to matter.
Therapy can help when stress feels chronic and unmanageable, when you are noticing signs of burnout, when your coping strategies have stopped working, or when the relentless pace of your life is taking a toll on your health, relationships, or sense of self. Therapy for stress and burnout often involves a combination of nervous system regulation, values clarification, boundary setting, and addressing the underlying patterns that make it difficult to slow down.
Learn more about stress and burnout therapy at Being and Becoming →
You Don't Have to Wait Until Things Are Worse
Across all of these challenges, the common thread is this: you don't have to be at rock bottom to deserve support. Therapy is not a last resort — it is a resource, available to you at any point along the spectrum of human struggle.
If you recognized yourself in any of the descriptions above, or if you've been quietly wondering whether therapy might help, that wondering is worth paying attention to.
At Being and Becoming Counselling and Wellness Services, we offer a free consultation to help you find the right fit — whether that's with one of our therapists, our dietitian, or somewhere else entirely. We are located in Burnaby, BC at the Burnaby-Vancouver border, and offer virtual therapy to anyone across British Columbia.
