Individual Counseling

Therapy As A Crutch

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Although we tend to think of going to therapy in a positive light, as a chance to overcome problems and grow, it can hold people back when they start to treat it as a crutch. The problem is that an hour where someone is entirely focused on you, on the minutiae of your every thought and emotion, is addictive. The less close relationships you have in the rest of your life the more addictive it will be.

Once you start treating the therapeutic hour as a substitute for life you’re in trouble. All of that endless talking, all of the interpretations, all of the increased insights are useless if you don’t take that vital step where you actually implement your knowledge in the real world to change the practice of your life. It’s easy to start to feel like you’re getting your emotional connection quotient met every week through the therapeutic relationship and to therefore slack off on forging meaningful relationships outside of the therapy hour. This is what we mean by using therapy as a crutch.

The point of therapy is to supply you with better tools for life, not to take the place of life, and you’ve got to be sensitive to this difference or you might find yourself in the position of feeling like you’d be lost without the therapy hour when in actuality the goal from the very beginning should be to be able to move beyond it as quickly as possible. Therapy is not an end in and of itself but only a means to the end of a more fulfilling life.