Therapy can transform your life, not just because therapists eagerly listen to your deepest thoughts and traumas, but because they help unravel complex emotions. It's a significant help. Lately, a Reddit user asked for stories of therapists' profound statements. Responses flooded in, creating a thread filled with insightful, almost mystical-like advice.

#1

The anxiety you're feeling is not evil or your enemy, it’s an overprotective friend trying to keep you safe because it once saw you hurt. Do not fight it, prove it wrong.

#2

"Change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change.".

#3

I asked him, "How do you process all of the negative feelings that are projected at you?" and he said "They aren't my feelings"

I don't think he realized how profound that was.

The biggest misconception about therapy is that therapists will give advice. People start sessions hoping for instructions on how to fix their lives. But the reality is completely different. In fact, mental health professionals help patients understand what drives them and the patterns of their thoughts and actions. Therapy also empowers individuals to make their own decisions and confront the issues that trouble them.

#4

You aren’t that interesting.

I would have panic attacks and paranoia that people were out to get me (PTSD etc) and would think that people were judging me in grocery stores because my toddler was crying or that my hair was messy. And honestly it boiled down to…nobody cares. We’re all trying to survive and get through the day and what someone looks like or does, we observe and move on. Nobody is that interesting. Nobody (for the most part) is going to remember to toddler crying for a brief moment or the way I was dressed or if my makeup was perfect. Nobody. The only person who will remember is me, and how I made MYSELF feel.

#5

I was discussing with my therapist that although I’m still young, I felt like it was too late to achieve what I wanted my life to be. She very seriously looked me in the eye and said “Are you dead?” “Well….no” “Then there’s time” and it’s a motto I’ve been reminding myself of daily.

#6

When I broke down because I was so fed up of being scared and anxious all the time he said something like.

“You can’t be brave without being scared first.”

It always stuck with me that fear, no matter how overwhelming, won’t last forever and I try to see it as a chance for me to prove to myself I can fight back and try to get through this.

#7

Your friends should not make you cry.

Pathetic that I needed to learn this in my 30’s, but there it is.

#8

As a teen in therapy, I used to call myself a potato because of my ugly appearance. The woman I had sessions with actually gave me a small plastic potato replica and had written on it in sharpie "some people like potatoes."

I think it was just the effort she went to trying to help me/cheer me up that really affected me and my judgement of professional help (I was an angsty kid) and after that I took getting help much more seriously.

#9

You're going to put yourself in an early grave trying to make your Mother happy. Your Mother is sick, trying to make her happy is like trying to fill a bucket that has no bottom, its not going to happen unless she fixes the bucket. You can't fix it for her.

#10

"Just because the mentally ill person screaming at you lives in your home instead of on the streets doesn't mean their opinion is any more true"

"The fact that the relationships you have with some people are involuntary doesn't mean you should hold them to a lower standard than voluntary relationships; you can hold them to a higher standard".

#11

Not every friend has to be a close friend, you're able to have different kinds of friends (like levels of how close they are or how much you confide in them).

I struggle with being a loner and it affected my mental health a lot because I could count my friends on one hand. I thought of people as acquaintances or close friends with no grey area. This advice helped me appreciate more of the people who I'm not super close with but they still have a presence in my life.

#12

“Sorry, but you’re just not that powerful.”

In response to my tendency to accept blame for everything that has gone wrong in mine and my kids lives. It should have been obvious to me but it wasn’t. When I processed this statement I felt overwhelmingly relieved.

#13

“You don’t need to please everyone all of the time. People who love you will not leave you because you disagree with them or do something they don’t like.”

She nailed a lot of my behaviours back to the fact my biological dad left when I was 9 months old. I cannot cope with perceived abandonment, and will do everything in my power to keep people happy… because they might leave me.

#14

I had been in therapy for about a decade, and was talking to her about online dating. I said it was like being sucked into a whirlpool, in that there is only one small step between just playing around the edges and being sucked into the thing. She asked me why I used that example, and I said "Because, when I was 9, I was sucked into a whirlpool in a creek, and only survived because my brother managed to pull me out." This started a flurry of scribbling in her notebook I had not seen before. Also answered LOTS of things.

#15

That I was more addicted to the breaks and deep breathing than I was to the nicotine.

Over one year without smoking and watching my dad die of lung cancer due to a lifetime of smoking.