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You've been asking yourself this question for months now. You show up every week. You've tried CBT, had some EMDR, maybe even found a therapist who "gets" you. But here you are at 11pm, googling variations of this same question because something still isn't shifting.
Here's what nobody tells you: you might be doing everything right and still getting nowhere. Not because therapy doesn't work, but because you're having therapy about your life rather than having therapy in your life.
You know what you need to do. Set boundaries. Communicate needs. Challenge negative thoughts. Practise self-compassion. Your therapist has given you the tools, you've done the homework, you understand the theory.
So why are you still having the same fight with your partner? Why does Sunday night still fill you with dread? Why are you still scrolling your ex's Instagram at 1am knowing it makes everything worse?
The gap between knowing and doing isn't information. If information fixed people, every therapist would be perfectly mentally healthy. They're not.
I've noticed people avoid their actual feelings through two seemingly opposite strategies: reaching for more or recoiling from everything. One looks like growth, the other like stagnation. But they're the same movement underneath - evacuation. Getting rid of feelings rather than having them.
Some people learned early that feeling good is safer than feeling real. They're in therapy, yes, but also doing breathwork, microdosing, cold plunging, manifesting. They've turned healing into a full-time job. They can't just be sad - they have to transform it into growth. Can't just rest - it has to be "radical self-care." Can't just eat lunch - it needs to optimise their gut microbiome.
Every feeling gets immediately processed into content, every experience metabolised into wisdom. They're not living their life; they're optimising it. And optimisation is just another word for control.
The therapy room becomes another place to perform wellness. They arrive with insights from their week, breakthroughs from their journaling, connections they've made. Good client. Gold star.
But when did they last just cry without narrating it?
Then there are those who show up to therapy but never really arrive. They're in the room but not present. They tell stories about their week like they're reporting someone else's life. They learned that feeling anything fully means annihilation. So they've become ghosts in their own existence. Present but not really. Going through motions without being moved.
In therapy, they're polite, compliant, even insightful. They'll tell you about their trauma with the same tone they'd use to order coffee. They understand why they're depressed. They just can't feel anything about it.
Every session ends the same way: "That was helpful, thank you." But nothing shifts.
And then there's a particular variation I see often: people who arrive pre-diagnosed, pre-analysed, pre-packaged. They've read the literature, they know the terminology, they might even be therapists themselves. They can tell you exactly which childhood experience created which defence mechanism. They're psychologically sophisticated. They get it.
But getting it and feeling it are different continents.
They've turned their pain into a PhD thesis. Every feeling comes with footnotes, every memory has been peer-reviewed. Their therapist nods, takes notes, might even be impressed. But meanwhile, their actual life remains exactly the same. The messy, feeling, breathing life goes untouched.
Clean pain is just pain. Your partner leaves, you grieve. Someone dies, you mourn. You fail, you feel the failure. It moves through you like weather - intense, sometimes terrible, but temporary.
But when you avoid feeling it through achievement, distraction, or analysis, you create something else. The exhaustion of constantly running. The anxiety about being anxious. The shame about feeling angry. The loneliness of never letting anyone see you break.
This isn't weather anymore - it's climate. A permanent atmosphere of not-quite-feeling, not-quite-living. You're not feeling your feelings; you're feeling feelings about your feelings. And that's endless.
Real therapy, the kind that changes you, doesn't feel like progress. Not at first. It feels like regression. Like you're getting worse. Because you're finally feeling things you've spent decades avoiding.
The competent adult suddenly feels like a needy child. The helper discovers rage. The good one finds their selfishness.
Your therapist isn't impressed by your insights. They're interested in your silences. Not what you know but what you can't say. Not your formulations but your fumbling.
You start saying things that surprise you. Feeling things that don't make sense. You cry about something "stupid". You rage about something "tiny". You need things you can't justify.
This is what change looks like: messier before it's clearer.
The solution isn't better therapy techniques or more sophisticated understanding. It's simpler and more terrifying: letting yourself be affected. Affected by your therapist's presence. By their words landing differently than expected. By feeling seen in a way that's uncomfortable. By not being able to manage their perception of you.
This capacity to be moved, changed, touched by another person isn't built through worksheets. It's built through relationship. Through showing up week after week, same time, same place, especially when you don't want to.
Through bringing your "boring" problems, your "shameful" wants, your "stupid" concerns. Not your interesting trauma or philosophical insights. The ordinary mess of being human.
If you're still reading, you're probably caught between two truths: what you're doing isn't working, and the alternative feels terrifying.
That's exactly where you need to be. Not comfortable, not confident, not even hopeful. Just finally honest about the cost of staying the same.
You already know whether this describes your therapy experience. You know whether you're tired of explaining yourself without changing, of understanding everything and shifting nothing.
The question isn't whether you need help - you're already in therapy. The question is whether you're ready for help that values your confusion over your clarity, that's more interested in your experience than your insights about your experience, that challenges your performance of wellness rather than applauding it.
This kind of work is uncomfortable. Not because it's harsh, but because comfort is what you've been choosing for years, disguised as progress.
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