I think ‘stuck’ is the first word that comes to mind when people describe why they need help. It’s baffling… frustrating, confusing, and intensely infuriating when we can’t find our own way out of this maddening mental state. For some people, asking for help implies weakness. I believe the opposite is true. When you can accept help, you demonstrate the strength to seek the life of your dreams.
I believe we humans respond well to a pattern of regular sessions. The warmth we feel when familiarity grows and the trust we feel when reliability becomes a given allows a relationship to emerge for speaking the deepest truth, wondering out loud, listening, and thinking together. This experience may be a new one for some people.
I now realize that the mental energy used up in holding onto old secrets, preserving shame, proclaiming humiliation, and re-itemizing regrets is exhausting, wasteful, and aging. We don’t like to think our history impacts the trajectory of our future. I’ve also learned how understanding is an enabler that permits you to influence the outcome.
I know sometimes a person is looking for help with a specific behavior or troubling symptom. Trichotillomania is one symptom that fails repeatedly to respond to your ‘will’. Hair pulling tends to permeate the personality by complicating every relationship, affecting self-esteem, disrupting social and sexual life, and interfering with concentration. Most telling, it means hair thinning or baldness. Statistics show that people usually pull their hair for more than a decade before they seek help. I have a particular interest in trichotillomania, but I also work with other unwanted behaviors.
I think our modern world forgets that thinking together can unburden a frustrated mind. Although science can try to help, sometimes it succeeds by sealing over problems. If that solution hasn’t felt satisfactory, you might try giving new meaning to old convictions by exploring the emotional experience of your world. The knowledge gained may change little, but this little is very precious. I paraphrased these wise words from a past thinker.