Because it has nothing to do with how strong we are or how much will we have. Because talking to family and friends and having their support helps but sometimes, they are part of the problem or they are bias. A psychotherapist can offer much more. They have years of specialized training and experience that make them experts in understanding and treating the most complex problems. Their techniques and tools are developed over decades of research and is not just talking and listening.
Another argument is that you can tell to your psychotherapist things that you wouldn’t tell to others. Everything is confidential and your psychologist will not judge you, he will recognize behavior or patterns objectively.
You don’t have to go through the worst moment of your life to call a specialist. But it’s true, usually people go to psychotherapy just like a patient to the emergency room – in crisis, after ignoring for a long time their issue(s), hopping it will pass, after self-medication and when friends’ advices (if they know) didn’t help. People go to therapy when it hurts, when nothing worked and this state has been ongoing without any significant improvement.
Rare are the people who at the first signs of discomfort turn to specialized support and usually they are psycho-educated (they have been to a therapist or are open to these types of interventions).
You usually see “prevention” in parenting – when the parent/ parents want to learn how to raise happy children, to those persons seeking to grow, to understand themselves and to better deal with life challenges or to those couples wanting who want premarital counseling or couple enrichment.
Relying on psychotherapy does not mean that you are weak, just as letting a mechanic to repair your car does not mean that. In reality, the courage to ask for guidance is a sign of strength and determination to get out of the situation rather than weakness.
