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This has been a difficult question to answer, and I know I cannot answer it without bias as I am a representative of the system. However, I’ll do my best to give you some information about therapy and encourage you to experience the benefits of therapy for yourself and your life.
I felt quite vulnerable and uncomfortable here at the start of 2023, but come to think of it, I believe I have always felt that to some degree. It has changed given the circumstances of my life, but I do not believe there is anything unusual about that. It seems to me that this is a fundamental part of my reality as a human being. My discomfort in my private psyche is not abnormal but rather is related to my relationships with the world and what matters to me. I have never been miserable or in pain over things that did not matter to me.
If you have read my past post on grief, it is very similar to the theory presented there in that we grieve from a place of great reward in having a relationship that mattered to us so much that when we lost it, we felt such tremendous pain. The discomfort that we experience in our minds is not a product of something innately within us, but it is because of our relationship with an uncomfortable, unpredictable world.
Therefore, you should start therapy in 2023. No lies. No more fronts. No more masquerade balls. Honesty. Not the disingenuous honesty that is spoken of as being a priority, but the real type that is uncomfortable and makes us squirm. The façade type of honesty is based on convenience, but one can truly build on the type of honesty that is pure. The foundations necessary to build a sustainable lifestyle can be constructed at the deepest root of your most honest self.
When meeting new clients, I utilize an analogy to compare our need to express ourselves and share our private psychological experiences to the regulation of the flow of water by engineers at a dam. It is just a reality that if those measurements are not precise. If those warnings or irregularities are ignored and if the necessity of routine maintenance is ignored, the pressures of an unbelievable force of nature will destroy that structure. A dam or wall made by humans is not natural, and I would pose that neither are the rules by which we govern our private psychological experiences.
Therapy is meant to be a place where you can be free. Free from all judgments and rules. A place where the valves can be opened and all the pressure that has accumulated in your mind can be released. Even if it is just for an hour of your week amid a very stressful life, therapy will offer you the freedom to express yourself honestly. So, at the end of this small thought, I hand it back to you the reader: Why not start therapy in 2023?