What's the difference between speaking with a friend and a mental health professional?

I get this question a lot.

How a professional differs from a friend

Friendship conversations are mutual, you take turns sharing and supporting. We also tend to choose friends based on our own emotional maturity. If we’re struggling, we may attract friends who are also struggling, which can create connections that mirror our inner wounds without helping us move forward.

With a professional, the focus stays on you. That focus exists for a reason: the goal is to help you close developmental or coping skill gaps so you can become more functional, adaptable, and ultimately happier.

Because of early developmental wounds, many people don’t have truly “safe” people in their lives. They may also have a pattern of choosing those who are neglectful or unable to truly see them. In some cases, a person may not even realize (especially early on) that they have been surrounded by unsafe people all along.

Speaking with a professional can be a break from that cycle, or even a break from your own loneliness.

The map childhood draws

As children, we unconsciously form beliefs about:

- Whether the world, and we ourselves, are safe

- Whether we are kind, capable, and lovable, or the opposite

- What love looks like (care and encouragement, or chaos and pain)

- Whether it’s safe to express our needs and desires

- Whether we can focus without scanning for danger

These early experiences shape how we connect, cope, and see ourselves. Time doesn’t erase them, instead, the effects compound. Unresolved wounds can snowball into patterns of low self-esteem, poor nervous system regulation, and reinforcing beliefs that keep us stuck.

The map is exactly what the professional works on. Ideally, a good professional knows what a healthy map looks like, understands the many ways development can go off track, and can provide solutions to improve that map, helping the client navigate the world with guidance that leads to greater happiness.

Tools beyond talk

While talk therapy or coaching is essential for building interpersonal skills and understanding patterns, many professionals (myself included) also use tools like:

Guided meditations to shift unconscious beliefs (for example, the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol)

Somatic techniques to release trapped emotions, regulate the nervous system, and create new bodily experiences

A resource I recommend

If you want to learn more about choosing the right professional, especially for healing complex or childhood trauma, Pete Walker’s _Holistically Treating Complex PTSD_ offers a practical and compassionate framework that applies to most therapeutic work.

Work with me

Looking for support? Check out my about page to learn more about my availability, pricing and focus. And as always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!