People Recount The Most Profound Thing Their Therapist Ever Said

Searching for Reason

"'You're trying to rationalize something said by an irrational person. You won't make sense from nonsense.'"

- A_Random_Lady

Intentions vs. Actions

"We judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge others by their actions."

- codewarrior128

Unfair Compromise

"If someone can't or won't meet you halfway, that doesn't mean you go further. One-hundred percent of the time, that will lead to resentment."

- rainynotes

Negative Self-Talk

"Not profound necessarily, but she noticed I was very hard on myself and asked me if I would talk to others the way I talk to myself."

- suspicious_lobster6

"I was out with my little one, and I did something silly, so instinctively, I called myself an id**t."

"My daughter said, ‘Daddy, you’re very mean to yourself,' and now I think about that a lot."

- craptainbland

Simply Surviving

"She pointed out that a lot of the things I do or don’t do that I hate about myself are coping and survival mechanisms."

"They were important to surviving a s**tty upbringing, and now that I’m safe, they aren’t needed. Unlearning these traits/habits are hard. It’s not my fault, and I need to allow myself to recognize that."

- kmk89

"My therapist hit me with something when we were in that same vein. He said, 'You’re basing your way of living off the part of your life where you had no agency. You have that agency now.'"

- zharkus

An Overprotective Friend

"'Your anxiety is not evil or an enemy. It’s like an overprotective friend trying to keep you safe because it saw you hurt once. Don’t fight it; just prove it wrong.'"

- Laura5013

Be Proactive, Not Reactive

"'You don’t have to wait for something terrible to happen before you change your behavior.'"

- Olda**rollerskater

Constantly Growing and Changing

"'People are not finished products.'"

"It's really helped soften my outlook and attitude toward others and myself."

- yekirati

Level of Danger

"'Is this harming you or is this just uncomfortable?'"

"Not every difficult situation is harming us; sometimes it’s just a stretch, and those are uncomfortable. If it’s uncomfortable, it’s likely teaching you something and would be worth working through."

"I’m high-strung with anxiety, so this helped me calm down and look at difficult situations more objectively."

- CuriousTsukihime

Incompatibility Is Okay

"I never ever realized this before and it’s gonna make me seem like an id**t, but it was profound to me to hear, 'You aren’t compatible with everyone.'"

"I used to think that I could make a relationship work with anyone as long as the effort was there, but she opened my eyes to realizing that what makes someone special is when you both are compatible with each other because that’s actually a very rare thing to find."

- neoIithic

Breaking Generational Cycles

"Your ability to cut people off and self-isolate is a trauma response to never having anyone to depend on when you were young."

"I now understand why my parents were the way they were, and I no longer ascribe to them blame for my current mental state, and I am in the process of taking personal responsibility for my actions and not passing on generational trauma."

- Odd-Grapefruit4215

A Reality Check

"When I came back from Iraq, I was not in a good place. I was dealing with some serious PTSD, and started to withdraw from the world."

"Finally, I saw the VA was offering free mental health therapy for returning vets, so I gave them a call."

"The therapist came out to my place and we talked for a bit, and then he said something that made me think for the first time there was light at the end of the tunnel: 'You know, you're not half as crazy as you think you are.'"

"That one sentence helped me find my way back. I'll never forget that."

- Hewholooksskyward

Nice, But Optional

"Forgiveness of another person is not a necessity to move on, despite what people say."

"But you DO need to forgive YOURSELF for not being able to forgive the person who wronged you, otherwise, you’ll hold onto anger forever."

"Once you let go of THEM, forgiveness aside, your life is that much better."

- OkeyDokeyArtichokey1

Because 'Family'

"They pointed out to me, 'Many intrafamily problems boil down to bad manners.'"

- OpalWildwood

"I realized that my family is very good at maintaining appropriate social boundaries with other people but within the family interactions, they totally disappear. And we're supposed to put up with it, because FAMILY."

"Like, why do you treat your family s**ttier than strangers? How do we deserve less respect?"

- StickFigureSoul

Perpetual Worry

"Worrying about something makes you experience it twice!"

- jslay588

"My dad actually said this quote to me and it really resonated with me: 'Worrying does not relieve us of tomorrow's troubles; it only robs us of today’s joy.'"

- Life-Gazelle3499

"I like to tell myself, 'It looks like you’re writing a fanfiction again,' whenever I start imagining how something that could go bad might go and it starts to feel too real."

"It makes sense because what is fanfiction? It’s a made-up story that isn’t 'canon,' written by a fan imagining what they THINK will happen. That’s basically what every bad 'what if' you imagine in your head is."

"Or you can say that that scenario you just imagined is something YOU made up, which makes it fiction. It’s no more real than (name of the last fictional movie or show you watched). That helps me a lot, too."

- StreetIndependence62

It makes perfect sense that this is the advice that Redditors have held onto over the years.

All we can say, really, is we wish we could have all heard these and internalized them when we were young.