If You Find It Hard to Seek Help, You Need to Read This Book
47% of Americans believe that seeking therapy is a sign of weakness. If life were a video game, many people play the whole thing as one character. Their interactions with other characters and responses to various challenges stem from the same set of values, beliefs, and core identity — which usually come from childhood. If their character is a builder, they can only interact with a tree by cutting it down to build houses. Another character, say a farmer, can pick apples from the tree. But each character rarely gets to experience what other characters do. In other words, instead of growing, we’re repeating the same patterns over and over, until we die. People often expect therapy to make us happy for the rest of our lives. I think I used to think that too. But reading Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb made me realise that therapy is simply an experience that interrupts our patterns. Therapy — or the principles of therapy — helps us unlock new characters. We may have grown up a builder, but we learn that building is not all there is. We can learn to farm, to save lives, to sell.(The image is a quote that reads: “Before successful therapy, it’s the same damn thing over and over. After successful therapy, it’s one damn thing after another.” — John Weakland, psychotherapist) I’m not asking you to find a therapist right now, or after reading the book. That’s a whole process in itself — and a big step for non-help seekers. Simply process the information in the book. Let it sit in your mind for a while.
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