Myth: Everyone who needs or seeks psychotherapy has a mental illness.

Response: Many people who seek psychotherapy don’t meet official criteria for having a diagnosable mental disorder. Instead, they are denying the realities of life that they simply don’t want to accept. The more they refuse to acknowledge these realities, the more dysfunctional their lives become. They often seek therapy in hope that the therapist will help them prevent the realities of life from occurring! In short, they are seeking a miracle. They don’t want to change; they want the world to change to suit them.

Some people want and expect the world to conform to their belief about how things “should be,” rather than accepting the various realities of life that they dislike. When taken to the extreme, the individual essentially creates and lives in a fantasy of “what I need to believe,” rather than coping with what truly is.

For instance, a client, I’ll call Margaret, didn’t want to admit that her son had a learning disability. She was adamant that nothing was wrong with her son, except his laziness. She preferred to label him as lazy (something she believed she could change by punishing him when he didn’t complete homework assignments), rather than label him as having a neurological brain disorder (something she believed could never be changed or fixed).

The more Margaret clung to her preferred belief, the worse her son performed at school without the appropriate interventions. She felt increasing upset with her son and with her sense of failure as a mother. The solution to her problem required facing the reality that neurological problems occur through no fault of anyone. As long as she denied this reality, she would feel upset with herself; frustrated by her son; etc. and unable to cope or manage the problem effectively.

There are many clients like Margaret who come to therapy because they are feeling unhappy, guilty, unsure how to cope, etc. Over time, a pattern of denying or refusing to believe those things that they’d rather not believe distorts their ability to see reality. When one can’t see reality, a person’s changes of coping well with it are greatly diminished.

What are the harsh realities that so many people refuse to accept?

1) Besides birth and death, change is probably the third inevitability of existence. Change characterizes life. Nothing remains the same. And everything eventually ends. Many people attempt to avoid change because it frightens them. As a result they become over-controlling of themselves and sometimes, of others. Paradoxically, the more they attempt to control change, the more they feel out of control.

2) Pain is a part of life. If you live with the idea that you can escape pain (physical or emotional), you are living with a childlike belief that only good things should happen in life, especially if you yourself are being good. This belief stems from the idea that bad things don’t happen to good people.

3) Life is not always fair. Much of the world’s anger is generated by this belief that life should be fair. Yet, fairness is not a guarantee. When we resist something because it isn’t fair, we waste our energy through righteous anger. We rage about life’s inequities rather than accept and move forward in a productive manner

4) Best laid plans can fail. Just because you’ve planned your life, doesn’t mean that life must follow your roadmap. Remember, “change” is inevitable, so the more flexible and adaptable we are, the better we can cope and go with the ripples that life creates.

5) We cannot avoid personal responsibility. Many people waste more energy on generating excuses for themselves than acknowledging their mistakes and moving forward to the next step, problem solving. No matter what the reasons, we must accept responsibility for out actions and the consequences they generate. Defending our actions (i.e. “I didn’t realize……”It wasn’t my intent……) prevents us from acknowledging our actions created a negative outcome that we didn’t want to happen.

6) Nobody is perfect. This illusion is quite common when you notice the unrealistic standards some people hold themselves to.

7) You can’t trust everyone. People seem to fall into two major problem areas when it comes to trust. Either they don’t trust at all (i.e. paranoid of people), or they trust too easily and quickly (i.e. desperately wanting to believe that people they depend upon are always loyal, loving, trustworthy, etc.). Trust is something that people must slowly earn through they behavior/actions over time. When it is automatically given to others, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Just because you feel a need to trust, doesn’t mean you can automatically trust someone).

When people can embrace the above realities of life, they can begin functioning on a more realistic playing field. They can see what is really happening and respond accordingly. They can behave more grownup and less like a naïve child. Acceptance allows for a healthier response. To be responsive to the world, we must be able to respond in the here and now, to “what is,” not to “what we wish it would be.”