We are a highly-intelligent species and yet we are often not able to resolve or often even recognize the stuff going on in our own heads. Why is that?
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Been in therapy 10 years.
ELI5 summary:
It’s like if you want to drive a car. You can wish all you want to know how to drive that car, but if you don’t have the skills to do it, you’ll just crash. Therapy is like learning how to drive a car. You’re learning skills you don’t have from someone who does.
Further insight:
It’s true you could figure skills out from reading a self help book, and sometimes those do have insight. But the car analogy is pretty spot on, you can’t just grab a driver’s manual and start long haul trucking. There’s a whole learning curve. Things like healthy emotional regulation should be modeled for kids, but if parents aren’t super attentive, this may not happen.
Lastly… I’m also a buddhist, and buddhism is sort of low grade cognitive behavioral therapy. So there is kind of a model for performing therapy on yourself.
Buddhism has the four noble truths:
1.) Existence is suffering
2.) Suffering leads to truth
3.) Truth leads to enlightenment
4.) The eightfold path is the way
If I’m in pain… I acknowledge it, try and determine why… I just broke up with my girlfriend of 2 1/2 years about three months ago.
1.) I’m in pain over the breakup
2.) I’m in pain because I don’t like being alone
3.) I don’t enjoy being alone with myself
This tracks with what I’m currently working on in therapy. So the plan is to enjoy my own company first, before I seek out another person to complete me.
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