While I’m not a therapist, I’m often the first person you’ll connect with at Soul Purpose Counseling. As the Client Care Specialist and Operations Manager, I’m here to welcome you, answer your questions, and help you feel supported and cared for from the very beginning! I'm also a Certified Mental Health First Aider, trained to recognize when someone is struggling and to talk about it in ways that don't add more shame to something that's already hard. One number from that training has stayed with me: more than 40% of people with a mental health disorder went an entire year without getting any treatment at all (National Council for Mental Wellbeing, 2025). Not because they didn't need it. Often because they never got past the sentence, the one where they try to tell someone they love that they want help.
If that's you right now, this is for you.
Maybe you've rehearsed it. In the shower, in the car, in the mirror. You've got the sentence almost right and then your family member walks into the room and it evaporates. You text instead of call. You bring it up and then talk about something else. You've started the sentence "I've been thinking about maybe talking to someone" more times in your head than you've said it out loud.
That's not a flaw in you. That's just what it feels like to hold something tender and not know if it'll be handled carefully.
Here's what I want you to know, from someone who talks to people making this exact call every day.
You don't owe anyone your whole story. You're allowed to say "I want to start therapy" without explaining every reason why, every symptom, every bad week that led you here. "Enough" is whatever you're ready to share, not a full case file.
The language matters, and you're allowed to use it. In my training, we talk about person-first language: you're a person who's going through something hard, not "something wrong" with you. You can literally say that to your family: "I'm not broken. I just want support." That sentence alone does a lot of work.
It looks different depending on who you're telling, and that's okay. A teenager telling a parent might need to lead with "I need you to just listen, not fix it." A spouse telling a partner might need to say "This isn't about us, it's about me wanting to feel like myself again." An adult telling their own parents might need to say "I know this isn't how we talked about things growing up, and I still need to do it." Different rooms, same courage.
Their first reaction might not be their real reaction. Worry can look like deflecting, joking, or going quiet. That often means they care and don't know what to do with it yet, not that you said the wrong thing.
You're allowed to ask for what you need directly. "I don't need advice right now, I just need you to hear me" is a full sentence. So is "I don't need you to understand everything, I just need you to be okay with this."
Here's the part I want to say plainly: people do this every single day. Families adjust. The sentence that feels impossible right now gets easier the second time, and easier again after that. This isn't the end of a hard conversation. It's usually the beginning of an easier one.
And if you're still stuck on how to start, that's what we're here for. You don't have to have the perfect words before you call us. You can ask questions, you can be unsure, you can not know what you need yet. That's the whole point of talking to someone like me first, before you ever have to explain yourself to anyone else.
Source: National Council for Mental Wellbeing. (2025). Adult Mental Health First Aid: Participant Processing Guide, Blended Delivery (Version 2.0.7). Mental Health First Aid USA.