A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from The School of Life

Recovery can start the moment we admit we no longer have a clue how to cope.

Many mentally ill patients have suffered all their lives from a feeling that they are not, in and of themselves, good enough. They are likely to have worked hard for decades and become extremely high achievers in order to prove to someone who was skeptical about them at the outset that they are respectable and worthy after all.

We must make time, as often as once a day, to lie very still on our own somewhere, probably in bed or maybe in the bath, to close our eyes and direct our attention toward one of many tangled or murky topics that deserve reflection: a partner, a work challenge, an invitation, a forthcoming trip, a relationship with a child or a parent. We might need

miraculous: that they could be loved without prizes, that true love isn’t about impressing or intimidating someone, that an adult can love another adult a little like a good parent loves their child: not because of anything they have done, but simply and poignantly just because they exist.

What psychotherapy realizes is that, in our agony, what we desire more than anything, more than we usually even understand, is companionship: for someone else to know that we are suffering and to feel a measure of our pain more or less as we experience it. We yearn to feel that another person appreciates the scale of our despair and the magnitude o

One of the most basic features of our natures is that we are defensive. That is, we seek to ward off psychic pain and defend ourselves against perceived attacks. Our minds are squeamish. We try to uphold a bearable picture of ourselves in the face of any possible insights or criticisms that others may direct toward—us or that could emanate from the

We cause ourselves a lot of pain by pretending to be competent, all-knowing, proficient adults long after we should, ideally, have called for help. We suffer a bitter rejection in love, but tell ourselves and our acquaintances that we never cared. We hear some wounding rumors about us but refuse to stoop to our opponents’ level. We find we can’t sl

With this caveat, we should step outside the ordinary flow of the anxious day for a moment, close our eyes, take a deep breath and ask ourselves this: What am I really worried about right now?

As a result, we often lie, not for advantage or thievery, but in order to keep hold of a love we desperately want to rely on. We pretend to be strong and unafraid. We disown our needs and longings. We put on a show of being someone else.

The loving companion doesn’t get bored of instilling the same fundamental message: I am here for you and it will be OK.