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Mental Health

22 people share the most eye-opening things their therapist told them that they've never forgotten

"40 years of therapy and those 4 words still resonate with me."

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People share the most impactful things a therapist has said to them.

Good mental health is often achieved with the help of a therapist. Therapists can be an incredible resources for getting additional support during hard times, overcoming challenges, or looking to change patterns. Their words and insights can lead to breakthroughs, realizations, and stick with you for years to come.

So when the question "What's one thing a therapist has said to you that you will never forget?" was asked in a discussion among people who have gone to therapy, many decided to get vulnerable and share the most meaningful things they've been told by a therapist.

These are 22 of the most inspiring, gut-wrenching, and impactful words and pieces of advice that people took away from their therapy sessions that changed their lives.

1. "'Is the relationship you have now, the relationship you'd want for your children?' (to which I had a fast and almost visceral response) and she went on to say 'because this relationship will be the one their subconscious uses as the prime example of what they accept later in life.'" – Sarkasmic_Trix

2. "'Be kind to yourself.' 40 years of therapy and those 4 words still resonate with me." – ScottishWidow64

3. "You are not responsible for other people's happiness. You can contribute to it, but you are not ultimately responsible for someone else being happy or not." – Shot_Razzmatazz5560

happy, happiness, therapy, counsel, mental healthHappy Duck Dynasty GIF by DefyTVGiphy

4. "'Your thoughts are scarier than the real thing.'" – NewsgramLady

5. "Not everyone is going to like you." – Accomplished-Leg8461

6. "When we are growing and developing, the animal part of our brain that ensures our survival is hard wired to tune into our protectors. Parental disapproval stokes fear of death, basically. That is why I absolutely panic when someone is angry with me. That helped me break that circuit and rewire my brain." – SueBeee

7. "Give yourself permission. When you have a permission slip, it makes it physically easier to do what you need to do for yourself and let go of feelings that get in the way. She literally made me get out sticky notes and write things like: 'I give myself permission to let go of guilt. I give myself permission to have the wedding I want. I give myself permission to not be responsible for my mother.'" – iris_cat1313


Permission, therapy, notes, mental health, therapisttv land permission GIF by YoungerTVGiphy

8. "'Analyzing and researching are also avoidance tactics to avoid feeling.'" – Gallumbits42

9. "I was struggling with trying to 'save' my adult daughter dealing with substance use disorder. I was allowing her to live with me and she wasn’t working or improving. I was reluctant (read codependent) to let her go and kick her out because maybe she’d be homeless. Maybe her life would get worse. After months of this, my therapist looked at me in the eye and said: 'Who made you god? Why do you think you have the power to save her?' And that’s when it hit me. I had no control over the situation. I had to let her go. I kicked her out in 2023. Today she’s doing well. Sober, working and heading back to college. ❤️" – YellowFirestorm

10. "As my ex was gaslighting, insulting me, being an all around terrible person to me saying the most awful things about me to me and the kids my therapist told me, 'You can consider him an unreliable narrator.' That helped me with perspective." – ithinksotoomaybee

11. "After sharing some work updates and just needing a sounding board to see if I was overreacting or not: 'I’m going to take my therapist hat off for one second, that’s absolutely f*cked up, ok hat back on'." – Vrey

therapy, therapist, mental health, counseling, helpHbo Therapy GIF by SuccessionHBOGiphy

12. "After 2 months of marriage counseling my therapist said that things were not going to get better and that my husband was not a diamond in the rough he was a piece of coal and even if he wanted and participated in therapy he was never going to get well in this lifetime." – Puzzleheaded_Gear622

13. "After I broke up with my ex, he said 'Thank god, now you don't need therapy anymore'. Was literally our last session." – Aggravating_Pick_951

14. "Regarding looking for love from certain family members, she said, 'It's like a child going to the pantry looking for food, but they're isn't any. It's okay for that child to keep going back to that same pantry looking for food (even if there isn't any) because they don't know any better. But now that you're grown, you may need to accept that there will never be food in that pantry. You need to look for a different pantry.'" – MikeOxmaul

Empty pantry, advice, therapy, therapist, helpHungry Thanksgiving GIF by Looney TunesGiphy

15. "'So you're an orphan.' (Both parents had died by my age of 46)." – AGPym

16. "That sometimes we feel guilt or anger when the real feeling is helplessness. Sometimes it's easier to feel like we failed instead of realizing we had no power over it at all." – OhNever_Mind

17. "'These are feelings, not facts.'" – SweetSweet_Jane


feelings, facts, therapist, therapy, counselFeelings Feels GIF by WE tvGiphy

18. "'Their intent nor if they are consciously choosing to hurt you is what matters. Are they hurting you? Do you want it to continue? That is what matters.'" – Sarkasmic_Trix

19. "'Enabling can sometimes disguise itself as good intentions.'" – naughtytinytina

20. "When discussing past drug use, we talked about how I maintained sobriety throughout both pregnancies. She asked why, nobody forced me to. I said it was the right thing to do. Then she says 'if you can do the right thing for others, why can’t you do it for yourself?' Good question, Casey. Been thinking about that one a lot, even now. It’s helped me work on my self destructive behaviors, helped me prioritize my own needs, and helped me maintain my sobriety now." – Pure_Preference_5773

sobriety, mental health, therapy, therapist, advice, counselSobriety GIF by Lady GagaGiphy

21. "Two things: 'I think it’s time you talk to your doctor'. (my situational depression was progressing to a point of no return, and it was time to be medicated. I went to my doctor that day. My therapist saved my life). 'You’re going to be OK.' She said it so calmly and with such confidence. I believed her. And she was right." – Numerous_Office_4671

22. "'You get to define what "family" means.'" – TrueBelievingMoron

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Health

Relationship expert shares her advice on how to 'stop an argument in its tracks'

She has the perfect question to ask once your partner gets defensive.

via LaurenConsul/TikTok and Pexels

Therapist Lauren Consul has one trick to stop arguments before they begin.

Arguments start to take off when one partner begins to get defensive. So, therapist Lauren Consul shared her relationship-saving tip to "stop an argument in its tracks" when one partner goes into self-preservation mode.

Lauren Consul is a couples and sex therapist who’s developed a following of nearly 160,000 people on TikTok and has received over 5.4 million likes. She is an infidelity expert and hosts retreats to help people "survive and thrive" after one partner has strayed.

"The next time you and your partner are talking, and your partner becomes defensive, I want you to do this: Pause, and say, 'I want to understand what happened there. What did you hear me say?'" Consul says in her TikTok video with over 42,000 views.

"This question is key because it does one of two things," she continued. "First, it can allow for clarification. A lot of times when we've become defensive, we've interpreted something our partner has said incorrectly. We've run it through a filter, we've told ourselves a story about it, it's triggered something... So we're not actually hearing what our partner says, and it allows for clarification."

@laurenconsul

#communicationtools #communicationtools #defensiveness #couplesargument #learnontiktok #cyclebreaker #couplestherapist #relationshiptherapist #marriagecounseling #mytherapistsays #therapytol #tiktoktherapist

"The second thing: If your partner did interpret what you said correctly, it gives you an opportunity to slow things down and understand what is happening for them and address the underlying issue, rather than get caught in a spiral of defensiveness," she continued.

Consul's advice for stopping arguments before they explode is helpful because it clears up any potential misunderstandings. The key is to remember the tactic in the heat of the moment to prevent things from getting out of hand.


This article originally appeared on 3.16.23

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Health

Clinical psychologist lists signs that mean it’s time to seek mental health help

In the end, wanting or needing someone to talk to is just as good as any other reason.

Dr. Julie|TikTok

Psychologist lists signs it's time to seek mental health care.

Knowing when to seek mental health care is not always as cut and dry as people may believe. Many people wrestle with whether or not they should speak to a therapist, psychiatrist or even their primary care physician about their struggles. Working in mental health, it often comes up that people minimize their own struggles with the thought that someone else has it worse so they shouldn't be struggling.

This may cause people to second guess when exactly they need to seek help. Dr. Julie, a clinical psychologist, posted a video on her TikTok page in order to help people figure out when they should seriously consider going to see a therapist. Some people may be surprised by the signals that indicate a need for therapy.

In the video, which has over 33k likes, Dr. Julie acts out different scenarios without speaking as what she's experiencing in those moments floats above her head in text overlay.

One of the very first signs that someone should consider therapy is, "Nothing seems to help and you're starting to feel hopeless." Hopelessness can be an indicator of depression, especially if it's paired with other things like not finding joy in things that used to make you happy or sleeping more often.

Another sign that Dr. Julie displayed on the screen was, "Your mood changes have persisted for several weeks or more." Again, barring a major life event like the loss of a loved one where feeling down is expected, this can signal depression. But what's most important to know is that any time you feel concerned about your mental health, you can seek therapy.

Therapy isn't something to be ashamed of or reserved for people who live with severe mental illnesses. In fact, you could simply need an unbiased perspective, want to gain tools for moments of stress or be experiencing a life change like a breakup. As a therapist myself, I want people to know that you don't have to be in distress to seek out therapy. Going for mental health maintenance is a perfectly acceptable reason.

Check out Dr. Julie's video below:

@drjuliesmith

Seek help any time you are concerned about your #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthsupport #psychologist

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Family

Therapist is creating a stir arguing that parents who fight create a toxic home for children

Kids shouldn't have to act like adults.

via Pexels

Parents who just can't stop fighting

Whitney Goodman, a licensed marriage and family therapist, shared a video about kids who grew up in homes where their parents were always fighting, which made many people feel seen. It also started a conversation about who deserves more empathy in the parent-child relationship: the parents or the children.

Goodman is known as the “radically honest” psychotherapist and the author of “Toxic Positivity: Keeping it Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy.”

"If you grew up in this kind of house, you may have noticed that your family would split off into different alliances or teams to try to manage the material discord. Because the marriage wasn't a good or safe foundation for the family, everybody else had to kind of go and form these new teams,” Goodman explained in an Instagram post.

"Maybe you and your dad would team up and talk bad about your mom—and mom was crazy, and we need to fight against her. And maybe your other sibling was teamed up with your mom and would start acting like her and started to behave in similar ways, and everybody was, like, trying to find stability but also out to get one another at the same time," she continued.

Goodman believes that no matter how well a child deals with parents who are constantly in conflict, the outcome will never be optimal.

"You're all looking for safety and trying to find it in different ways, but you'll never be able to achieve the same type of stability you would have felt if your parents had that concrete stable relationship,” she added.

Many commenters could relate to the unstable feeling that Goodman described in her post and the stress of living in a divided family and playing on different teams.

"All of this, and it's so confusing when you're an only child and you end up 'bouncing' between teams," Amwahl added.

"100%. Teamed up with my dad only to realize as an adult that he’s the problem," lovisoctavia wrote.

"This happened to me growing up. Even to this day I have to remind my mom that I’m not interested in talking badly about dad," hawkmoonrising said in the comments.

The post also made some parents who may have gone through challenging times raising their kids ask for some sympathy as well. This begs the question, in these domestic situations, who deserves more compassion, the parent or the child?

Goodwin posted a follow-up video with her answer.

Goodman believes that when children grow up, their parents tend to view their past as if they went through the situation as the people they are now, not the helpless kid. This skews the power dynamic in the parents’ eyes and puts them on equal footing.

But in the end, the children had no choice in the situation.

“When we're having these conversations, this will always be true: The child was a child who was helpless, defenseless, and unable to care for themselves physically and emotionally,” Goodman said. “The adult had power and options. And when we keep that in mind, it makes the conversation a little bit more fair.”

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