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I am a massage therapist but not a mental health professional.

I am quite a chatty, caring person and almost all my regular clients know about it. It is the best way to make clients to feel comfortable with me and the surrounding. Of course, all these conversations with clients are confidential. Sometimes, during the massage session, clients may happen to feel thoughts, memories, sensations and emotions surfacing into awareness that they shared these feeling to me. This is good, as those same feelings may be what created tension or stress in their body that prompted them to see me in the first place. Some may like to share with me about what their thoughts, how they felt and remembered during or after the session. Often, these sharing were all about how great was the massage session. They felt much better before they came to me. All their tension, stress, anxiety and depression seemed to be gone, in which can be true.

Massage therapy has the benefits on a number of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety and stress, but in my opinion, these benefits are mainly temporary relief and do not tackle the root causes. Also whether the clients can benefit from massage therapy will depend on the severity of individuals conditions and the kind of problems. In other words, massage therapy has its limitation on the benefits of mental health conditions.

So, if you seriously need to talk to someone on mental health issues , I can refer you to other professions, e.g. a counselor who can give you more specialised input or to other allied health professionals. Everything you chose to talk about, is of course totally confidential. I have also created a new page “Other Allied Health Services”, and you can find the link to one of professional counselors in NZ, Martin Fraser. He is a member of NZ Association of Counsellors and very experienced with anxiety, depression, grief and loss, relationship issues, self esteem, motivation, burnout, all type of addictions, life coaching. For more information, please visit his website.