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Honestly, my wife and I were very unaligned about church. She wanted us to be aligned and attend the same church, and I was basically fine with us going to two different ones. At the time I didn’t really see why it mattered so much to her. That tension is what pushed me to therapy.
It was a lot less formal than I expected. Mostly it was just talking through things and realizing patterns in how I think. The biggest thing that came up was how much I want to control outcomes in life—career, family, decisions, the future. I didn’t even realize how much that mindset was driving my reactions. It helped me see that a lot of my stress comes from trying to control things that just aren’t controllable. The future is uncertain. Life moves in ways you can’t plan for. Once I started accepting that, things got lighter. I learned that the real battle isn’t external. It’s internal. The conversations I have with myself—how I interpret things, how I react to uncertainty—that’s what actually shapes my life. Not the situation itself. It’s not about someone fixing you. It’s about understanding how your own mind works. Once you see that a little more clearly, you start handling life differently I've done therapy before, and I do believe in the benefits that seeking a professional brings. Almost two years ago I had a major curveball thrown at me when my career made a dramatic turn. Everything I had worked for in the last 17 years changed immediately. After the first few months of this change, my wife recommended that I seek counseling.
I was immediately grateful that she did because I'm not sure I wouldn't have made that decision on my own, at that time. For men, it can be very difficult to talk about life's pressures to anyone. Who do you open up to about your personal struggles? Who do you trust? Who can you rely on for objective advice? These were all of the questions I asked myself before seeking therapy about my life situation. After seeking therapy, I was reminded on why there are professionals that specialize in helping people through some of life's struggles. Therapy was a way, for me, to let it all out and not keep my emotions bottled up. It helped me intentionally slow down to be more self-aware on what I was thinking and why. It gave me the tools to deal and heal from the pressures of life. If I hadn't had a professional helping me along the way, who knows how I would have responded. We all need a little guidance on how to handle life and for me, I needed the accountability to keep my thoughts and feelings in check when responding to life's curveballs. Make no mistake, therapy did not try to solve all of my problems for me, it gave me the tools to effectively deal with my situation. It's easy in life to put a band aid on a gash that you have, but I had to be willing to take the band aid off and really look at my situation in depth and even confront some hard truths I had been avoiding. But in the end, the wounds are healing much better than anything I could have done on my own. Life is not always going to be easy, but seeking professional help is one of the best things you can do to stay mentally healthy in this, sometimes, crazy world. |
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