One of the biggest misconceptions about therapy is that people come because they’re incapable of coping. In reality, people arrive because they’ve been coping for too long. I’ve sat with executives, parents and other therapists whose entire lives are built around functioning. These people can regulate rooms, lead teams, hold families together and make difficult decisions under enormous pressure, but privately they’re exhausted and overwhelmed.
Therapy isn’t about being fixed, whether the presenting issue is burnout, relationship difficulties or addiction. In my practice it’s really about naming who or what you’ve become in order to survive your life. As humans we sometimes adapt to our circumstances without consciously realising, and later it can come as a blow to see how far we’ve drifted.
Simple check-ins can do a lot, and recognising a problem doesn’t actually always need to involve a third party. If you’re unsure whether you’ve drifted from living into merely functioning, ask yourself: Are you genuinely content in your independence, or frightened at the prospect of needing others? Are you driven by ambition and meaning, or is your performance tied to your sense of self worth?
Therapy can be confronting because it slowly begins separating survival strategies from selfhood and asks questions like these. Ones people spend years avoiding, consumed by work, relationships and productivity. Healing is rarely tidy or linear. Sometimes it starts with slowly recognising how much of your life has been organised around firefighting your own thoughts and nervous system.
Misconceptions about therapy
