You are sad, although you have a lot of reasons to be rather happy. You get angry about everything. People (who seem) happy blow your mind. You no longer enjoy a cake or a movie. You want to cry, but you can’t.

Or maybe you enjoy it, but it passes quickly. You eat crap, even though you know exactly how bad it is for you. From time to time, a thought crosses your mind that you must have cancer and you will die soon and who will raise your children… Or, worse, you think that they themselves will get cancer, and then you to die on the spot. You don’t sleep well at night, and when you sleep well, you wake up more tired than when you went to bed. You have put on too much weight, or maybe on the contrary, you are too thin. The food has no taste, forget to drink water.

You stare at your phone screen for hours, feeling guilty for staring at your phone screen. However, you can’t do anything else. The man annoys you with his easy life. The child annoys you. Your colleagues annoy you. The saleswoman on the corner. The bus driver. You are a ticking time bomb. Sometimes you just want to get up and leave the house in your cotton socks, go and never come back. You have a painful relationship with your parents, your grandparents, your past and your future. Something always presses and hurts you, you try to cover it with pieces of life, with cheerful statuses on Facebook, with edited pictures from vacations, but the pain cannot be hidden. It gnaws at you, it grinds you down, you are rotten. You dream yourself dead. You wish, at least sometimes, to die, to stop feeling the guilt, the sadness, the frustration.

You need to go to therapy. I know what you’re going to say. But you are wrong. It won’t pass. You won’t get well on your own. Depression, old wounds, they never go away. You cannot heal because you are afraid to look at them. You fear the pain it will cause you to be looked at. And it’s normal, it’s in our nature to protect ourselves from pain.That’s what makes a part of us, the survivor part. It keeps us alive by hiding under the rug pains, and with them, many good parts of us. It’s just that the living part of us, the part that wants to enjoy life, knows that there are unhealed wounds and always reminds us of them. The living part of us wants to heal, not put too small band-aids on too big wounds. The living part of us howls, cries for help. And you need specialized help, a reliable man with education and experience, who, holding your hand, helps you look where it hurts. It assures you that the pain will not kill you, on the contrary. He will set you free.

This alone will help you shake off the sack of mill you carry on your back. Only this will help you understand that you are not only pain, that your life is not and should not be a torment. Then you will regret that you waited so long, that you wasted so much time…

I’m not a psychologist. I suffered from depression, I ran away from it, it caught up with me. I read a lot. I looked to healers and astrologers for answers, talked to many acquaintances and strangers, the pain was still there. I went to therapy. It didn’t help. I stopped. The pain was increasing. I went again. I began to find out, to understand, to heal. I stopped. I went again. I started to breathe differently, to see differently. I will go again. It’s the most precious thing I’ve ever given my family, my children. They need me clear, balanced, reconciled, not a bundle of frustrations, unfulfilled needs, unjustified mechanisms that made me scream when there were no real reasons to scream, insomnia and panic attacks.

Now I’m here for them and I hope to be.

I talk about it openly to anyone who tells me they don’t feel good about themselves. Many look at me skeptically. And more explain to me why therapy cannot be a solution for them. Although it is, for anyone, for everyone, just finding the motivation to go and the right professional to go to. Honestly, I don’t know a single person who wouldn’t benefit greatly from the help of a therapist. Not even one.

However, most of them find excuses. There are no reasons, there are excuses. The survivor part of you, the fear of pain, is holding you back. But the truth is different. The living part, the good part of you, needs to keep reading this text to make arguments with the surviving part the next time you want to go to therapy and a voice in your head tells you one of the things below.

I have nothing to look for in therapy, my problems are old and long gone…

Your problems will come from a long time ago, but they are extremely present, since you are not enjoying life. The cause of these problems may be gone (an abusive parent, a poor financial situation, a difficult family situation), but the wound caused by it is still there. That’s what therapy does, it takes you back to where the hurt happened, it helps you see everything again, to understand, it gives you the tools to repair, no matter how old the sources of pain. No matter how old!

I have nothing to look for in therapy, because I’m not crazy, I’m just sad…

Therapy is not just for serious disorders, for schizophrenia and bulimia or autism. Therapy helps when something inside you is not letting you live, including an old pain, a traumatic memory, an unbalanced relationship. Continuous sadness is a sign of depression, and depression leads to suicide. Yes, many people with otherwise ok lives end up hanging themselves, to everyone’s surprise, alas, but they had the perfect life. Well, he had the setting for the perfect life, but he felt something else. Therapy can cure you of depression. Sometimes medication is needed, sometimes not.

Therapy can’t help me, no one knows what’s in my soul.

You don’t even know what’s in your soul. That’s why you need a specialist in the soul, that is, a therapist, to help you look at yourself, to help you understand, to guide you to repair. A good specialist will gain your trust, help you open up, confess yourself, for healing. No matter how close your spouse or girlfriend may be, they may not have the ability to guide you properly.

I can’t go to therapy, I have no money.

Therapy doesn’t have to be expensive. You can get good therapy with 50 lei, with 70 lei. 50 lei per week means 200 lei per month. You definitely pay more for gas. On cigarettes, maybe double, if you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. 50 lei is a meal for two at the restaurant. Two books on sale. A child’s blouse. Don’t buy her a blouse this week, she needs you all over her head more than a new blouse. Give your child this gift, go to therapy. Ask around, ask on facebook, you will find good specialists at decent prices in your city. If not, find someone who can help you on skype or over the phone, there are plenty. Stick with therapy, it’s the best investment you’ll ever make in yourself.

And I won’t even have time to go to therapy.

If then all the time you spend on Facebook from Monday to Sunday, it is sure to result in more than two hours a week, as long as your therapy takes, including the round trip. Ask the husband to take the kids to the park on Thursday night, Thursday night only, while you go to heal. There are solutions. Find them. Apply them. Do this weekly.

It doesn’t make sense to go to therapy, it’s too late, I should have done it a long time ago.

It’s true, you should have done it a long time ago. But it’s never too late, because you’ll feel better soon. It’s never too late to get better. Not even at 70 years old. If I told you that if you go to therapy, I will put 500 euros in your account, would you go? Good. What you will receive in the course of therapy is worth a million times more. Go!

I don’t go to therapy anymore, because I went one more time and it hurt me more.

Yes, I know what it’s like, I’ve run into non-professionals myself. As in any field, only what they damage is much more serious. It corrupts minds and souls and such people should lose their right to practice immediately.
Sometimes it’s just that you don’t fit. Do not give up. Keep looking. Someone there can surely help you.

I don’t go to therapy because it hurts.

That’s right, it hurts. All healing hurts. When your burned skin heals, it stings. When the broken bone is welded, it hurts. But it doesn’t hurt any worse than what you feel right now. Besides, it’s worth it. It’s pain with benefit. Usually, when it becomes the most painful, that’s when you approach great revelation and great healing. Don’t give up, keep going!

Let’s just say that grandma and mom didn’t go to so much therapy anymore and look how well I’m doing.

Are they really that good? Are you sure I’m okay with them? I’m pretty sure it’s not all pink and fluff there.

It is true that in the old days there was no time and no tolerance for such practices, the world was busy trying not to die of hunger. Just because they didn’t know and didn’t want better doesn’t mean you’re doomed to struggle the same way. I know hundreds of family stories with just as many abuses, traumas, and torments on all sides, which no one talks about. How good can those people really be?

Go to therapy!

If you have recommendations of good therapists in any city, please pass them on here, possibly the cost of a session, so that together we can make a good resource of reliable specialists who can help other readers in need. In fact, we all need it.

The article was also published on Medium, you can see it HERE.