How to Find a Little Joy Every Day

Working with a therapist can help you process major life transitions and equip you with coping tools for anxiety relief, but can it help you find the joy in everyday life? After all, finding recovery from our mental illness is more than just achieving relief, it’s about getting in touch with a more functional and more joyful version of our authentic self. But depending on where you are in your journey, it might feel like that joy is in short supply. 

Alli Cravener is a St. Petersburg therapist who uses a mixture of CBT, mindfulness, creativity, and play to help her clients reconnect with the unbridled joy of their inner child. When we were still children ourselves, we were able to access that joy instinctually. But for those of us who locked that part of ourselves away in adolescence and young adulthood, it can be difficult to get back in touch with your authentic sense of childlike joy. So what do the experts think is the best way to find your joy?

“What is it that the child has to teach? The child naively believes that everything should be fair and everyone should be honest, that only good should prevail, that everybody should have what they want and there should be no pain or sadness. The child believes the world should be perfect and is outraged to discover it is not. And the child is right.” – Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

How Does Therapy Teach You Mindfulness? 

Mindfulness is a concept that blurs the lines between therapy and philosophy. Mindfulness is the art of being comfortable and focused in the present moment. If we master this skill, we can appreciate the present and listen deeply to our body, mind, and soul. Without mindfulness, we find ourselves constantly trying to escape or distract from what’s right in front of us. If we neglect this skill, we risk missing out on the beautiful moments life lays out before us in favor of dwelling on the potentially uncomfortable ones. 

• Therapy Can Help You Find Comfort When You’re Burnt Out. If you’re already struggling with feelings of burnout and overwhelm, then it makes sense that you’d want to escape the present moment. But, counter-intuitive as it is, if our goal is to heal our feelings of burnout, we have to start living in the present even before it feels truly comfortable and trust that we can make it better as we go along. 
• Your Therapist Can Teach You How To Learn From Failure. Failure is one of the most tempting experiences to escape from. Failure can often fill us with guilt and shame. We forget that we are having a human experience that sometimes requires us to fail in order to learn. We learn as much from our mistakes as we do when we do the “right thing.” Sometimes, failing is the right thing to do. The right therapist can help you learn how to tolerate and grow from failure rather than be defeated by it. 
• Therapy Can Teach You How To Self-Soothe. If we cannot bring ourselves comfort in uncomfortable moments, then we stay in fight or flight, storing stress in our bodies that eventually manifest in physical pain. Learning how to self soothe is not just for your mental health, it is for your physical health as well! Fortunately, therapists are experts when it comes to soothing the aches of human life, and they can teach you how to do it yourself. Our therapists take a somatic approach to this, helping you build a map for your nervous system so you know what to do when you are in fight or flight mode. 

How Could Therapy Help With Depression? 

If you’re experiencing depression, especially if you’ve been going through it for a long time, it’s natural to be skeptical. You’ve likely tried a lot of things to cure the hurt, and not a lot of those things have truly offered relief from your depression. That’s why many choose to fight their depression alongside an expert.

Fighting depression is hard. It’s a daily struggle that requires vigilance and thoughtfulness when your judgment is already impaired by the chemical reality of being depressed. Your therapist can give you the tools to stay strong, even when you don’t feel strong.

• How To Make Art When You’re Sad. Art therapy is a real discipline with decades of science behind it. Engaging in artistic pursuits can hack the depressed brain into functional creativity, and the right therapist can help you learn how.
• Therapeutic Solutions For Burnout. You don’t need to suffer through your entire life tired and overwhelmed. If you are feeling burnout from the grind and monotony of ordinary life, your therapist can help you find solutions that are lasting and real.
• Therapy Can Help Us Learn Self-Love. Self-love is not something you have to earn, it’s something you deserve to learn! Therapists are teachers with experience in helping their clients come to an authentic place of self-appreciation and self-love. This comes from learning how to accept yourself, even when you make mistakes, and look at yourself like you would a friend.

How Will Counseling Help Me Connect With My Inner Child? 

“Connecting with your inner child is about following your whimsy without judgment or restriction. Children come into this world pure of heart. They do not judge, they look at the world with curiosity and experiment with life. You can experiment with life, too, and not take everything so seriously. Everything IS very serious, so much so that we are weighed down by stress and sadness. Because we are experiencing real problems and deep emotions, we must balance out the intensity by allowing ourselves to be guided our sense of wonder and creativity. To lessen the load of life, looking at the world through the eyes of a curious child who is experiencing life for the first time can re-ignite your sense of joy so that you can be more present with your very human experiences. This is because when you engage in play and novelty, your brain releases dopamine. Play helps you access a state of flow, which is where you’re completely absorbed and focused on a task that brings you enjoyment. That is where you are fully engaging with the present moment – not the sadness of the past, or the anxiety of the future, but the now, which is where your feet are. ” – Alli Cravener

• Counseling Can Help You Feel Secure In Your Relationship. If we were wounded in childhood by someone we were deeply connected with, it can be difficult to make and believe in those types of connections as an adult. A counselor like Alli can help you connect and build your relationships with others in a sustainable and healthy way.
• The Right Counselor Can Help You Honor Your Inner Child. If you’re someone who felt like they had to lock away a piece of their childhood in order to survive as a functioning adult, it can be very difficult to work through that on your own. A counselor like Alli can help you listen in for whatever your inner child is lacking, and untangle the often complicated web of emotions that comes along with it. Processing these things verbally (or through artistic mediums) can help you make sense of your experiences, find meaning, and ultimately know yourself better. 
• We Can Heal Our Family Stories In Counseling. A therapist like Alli can help you explore the stories that have been told and passed down in your family and decide which ones are serving you, and how to work towards letting go of the ones that don’t benefit you anymore. We all have stories that run on autopilot. Some of them are there with the intention of keeping us safe. It’s important to be aware of these stories so that you can re-write them in ways that empower you. 

St. Petersburg Therapists Who Offer Depression Relief

Alli is a counseling intern who offers therapy for depression in St. Petersburg, FL. Alli will help you rediscover your passion for life, help you face your inner shadows, and walk alongside you as you shine light on the parts of yourself that you want to transform. Stepping out of depression requires transformation that can be uncomfortable. The journey is certainly not easy, but having a solid therapeutic relationship can help anchor you and give you a space to explore yourself on a deeper level so you can live a life that you don’t need a vacation from, and you have the proper tools to cope when things get heavy. Alli is supervised by Dayna Wood, so you are essentially getting care from two quality counselors for only $55. Click here to schedule a consultation to get started.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sunny Ebsary is an educator, multi-modal artist, and writer specializing in the intersection of myth and mental health. Sunny’s writing walks the line between poetic and logical, giving readers a chance to interface with the mind and imagination. Sunny’s been putting pen to paper since he was a child, writing everything from albums, novels, and plays, to essays, interactive games, and of course, many articles! While studying both psychology and writing, he realized his real passion in life was helping others unlock their creative spark. Whether he’s leading a D&D game, directing a production, or diving deep into the brain, you can be sure Sunny will be ushering you toward finding meaning in your life.