13 People Share The Most Beautiful, Impactful Lesson They Learned From Therapy

“The fact that you are high functioning doesn’t mean that your illness is easier for you to deal with, it means it’s easier for others to deal with.” — azulsonador0309

“When you place unexpressed expectations on someone, YOU are the one setting yourself up to be let down.” — ksozay

“Sometimes, when we procrastinate, it’s because we need to feel control, even when the only thing we can control is choosing not to do something – even when it contributes to making our situation worse.” — jacobsadder

“Your internal monologue isn’t always reliable, especially when you are anxious or depressed.” — BrideOfFirkenstein

“You do not have to attend every argument you are invited to.” — throwaway101333

“Neither the past, present, or future can be changed through overthinking.” — soupcansorsunsets

“We seek what is familiar to us, even if it’s really unhealthy. There is a comfort in familiarity because it’s what we know / learned how to deal with.” — GPQ70

“My psychologist told me that learning new skills and knowledge, or establishing a new habit, creates a new neural pathway in your brain. It’s like hacking your way through a jungle; it takes a lot of time, effort, and energy to reach your destination (or achieve your goal). However, every time you do the thing, you reinforce that same neural pathway in your brain. As it is reinforced it becomes easier to fire up those neurons again, and thus, it becomes easier to do the thing. The jungle is still dense, but it is a little easier to follow the same path that you created yesterday, and every time you take that path it becomes a little more clear. Eventually the behavior may become so automatic that it requires no effort at all to follow that path. With respect to breaking a habit, or overcoming addiction: it takes serious effort to stray from your path, once it is established. Taking a new path means hacking through thick jungle again, but this time it requires even more effort because you know you could just follow the old, established path. This analogy has helped me quit smoking, study for exams, and establish a walking routine when I was too depressed to move. If all you get out of doing the hard thing is the benefit of having done the hard thing one time, it hardly seems worth the effort. It’s tempting to put it off until later. But if every successful attempt to do the hard thing makes that path easier to follow, it really is worth starting now. The reward is not just the infinitesimally small health benefits of 10 more minutes without smoking; the reward is actually proportional to the effort put in, because that is how much progress you have made towards your goal. Taking the easy path started to seem like a really dumb idea. Stubbornness kicked in and I started achieving goals.” — NevaSayNeva

“People’s actions towards you are a reflection of themselves, not you.” — passthechancla

“Friends will come and go. Family, in different ways, can and will do the same. You’re the only constant you’re going to have in your life. Be a friend to yourself. You wouldn’t say any of the negative things to your friends that you say to yourself. Learn to pick yourself up when you’re down, but also allow yourself to be human.” — leroy_hoffenfeffer

“When I start the negative self talk, I was told to pretend I am talking to my wonderful and sweet child. I could never say the stuff I say to myself to my son. The therapist told me to envision someone telling my boy what I say to myself and how would I react. It was eye opening as to how we are our own worst boogeyman.” — CaptainCacoethes

“No one sees the version of you that you see of yourself.” — Back2Bach

“People aren’t nearly as concerned about everything I’m doing as I think they are. They’re busy enough being self conscious about their own behaviors.” — badatwinning