Why not just talk to friends?

Friends are an awesome, important part of every healthy life.

So why therapy?

Therapists have a different set of tools and social rules that make focusing on ourselves or our relationships easier. Therapist’s time is something you buy, so you get to choose how it’s spent. (Y’know, within reason.) But here is one reason why therapists are useful: knowledge.

Two different types of knowledge or understanding

One type of knowlege is the kind where the more time I spend learning, I can decrease the amount of time you spend learning.

And then there’s the type of knowledge we have to gain on our own.

The former is stuff like book learning. The latter are things like learning to ride a bike—there’s very little demonstrating that is going to make it easier for you to learn.

So what’s the point?

The point of therapy is for the therapist to provide personalized knowledge to you so that you have good understanding about what it means to have healthy relationships, putting your experience in context, or have some roadmap for your inner world. The second point of therapy is to support you while you learn the things that you have to learn on your own.

Close-up of grout between exterior bricks.