Preventive Care Vs. Reactive Care for Your Overall Well-Being and Mental Health

Often, when you think about going to mental health therapy, it’s because you have a crisis or something significant that you need to work through. Maybe it was something big that occurred, like a school shooting, a friend or family member that passed away, or something smaller like communication issues in a relationship, difficulty managing stress at work, or persistent feelings of anxiety.

There’s a general misconception that therapy is only effective when we have something alarming or something important going on; that it is only necessary when we are in crisis or have something pressing to talk through. But that is not the case at all! There are two umbrella categories of care for mental health: preventive care and reactive care.

This is where understanding the difference between preventive care and reactive care is valuable for the longevity of your overall health.

What are preventive care and reactive care in mental health therapy?

Preventive care = early intervention

It’s a proactive approach focused on nurturing your emotional well-being, even when there is no immediate distress. By learning skills and understanding what makes you tick and where it comes from, you can manage and/or prevent something from becoming bigger than it needs to be.

Preventive care involves working through those core issues that cause present-day triggers and developing strategies that help you deal with your stress and emotions before they escalate into a larger problem.

Preventive care is about identifying potential issues early, finding patterns, understanding yourself, and knowing what you can do for yourself when something unexpected arises. Preventive care encourages you to have a deeper understanding of your thoughts and feelings, which allows you to come back down to your neutral zone of balance quicker because you know the tools that work for you and the resources available to achieve this.

Preventive care allows you to build resilience and manage the challenges that will inevitably come up in life. Mental health therapy provides you with the opportunity to acquire and build the strategies that work for you to cope with everyday life challenges with the self-awareness to make decisions that best benefit your mental health and overall well-being.

Reactive care = symptom reduction after something occurred

This is when you have a reaction to something that triggered or activated you, focusing on reducing symptoms after they have already happened. Reactive care involves crisis management, no matter how big or small the crisis is. It involves dealing with a situation that is deemed urgent by alleviating distress and regaining control of yourself without thinking deeper about where it came from or is tied to.

In these situations, the distress occurs first, and you are managing the distress as it arises, not knowing when that will be or how you will react. When you decide to care for yourself this way, it can take a longer time to recover because you have allowed the distress to grow over time without dealing with it at an appropriate time.

Reactive care is often less effective, as you are thinking about relieving yourself of distress in the moment, so you can continue with your normal day-to-day life. You may be waiting for the next shoe to drop and are dealing with the uncertainty about when that next thing will come. This can often be time-consuming as you are in a vicious cycle of anticipatory distress that becomes repetitive.

Now what?

There are uses for both approaches, and it’s not an option of choosing (or using) one over the other. Preventive care is recommended for long-term benefits and longevity of your mental health, whereas reactive care is helpful in the present. Both serve a purpose and are equally useful.

For instance, even if you are quite aware of yourself, understand your past, and have worked through the things that are triggering for you, that doesn’t mean you are immune to comments someone may make (completely unrelated to your past, though it may feel similar) that make you shut down. You will need reactive care and your coping tools to help you come back to your neutral baseline.

But what makes preventive care different and an essential part of your growth as a human is self-awareness. It allows you to recognize your emotions, behaviors, patterns, triggers, and more. Self-awareness allows you to identify things in yourself that aren’t useful or areas where you need growth. Most importantly, it allows you to shift from an automatic, unhealthy reaction to an intentional, proactive response.

Just like how you exercise your body to reduce medical concerns, “exercising” your brain by putting in the work to grow your understanding of your past and present gives you a brighter future. The more work you do on yourself with therapy, the more you improve your emotional regulation. You improve the ways you connect with people, which comes from enhancing your understanding of everything that makes you, you.

What can I do?

Similar to your routine annual physical check-up, your twice-a-year dental cleanings, and yearly eye exam, for your benefit, I recommend adding in a once-a-year or two to three times a year mental health check-up to give yourself a sense of how you are doing in your mental health.

This could allow you to check yourself for burnout, review your mood, sleep, stress levels, and overall life balance. Symptom trackers, screenings for anxiety or depression, and identifying patterns allow you to be proactive and make changes for what’s needed. If you find yourself out of balance and need to get out of a rut, develop new routines, adjust your self-care, and set boundaries.

If you have tried things on your own and you find yourself stuck or don’t know where to start, try therapy! Exercise the most important organ in your body – your brain – so you can become a better version of yourself.