Jun 12, 2026
One of the comments I hear most often as a therapist is:
"I don't know how you do what you do. It must be so hard."
I understand where the question comes from. Therapy is often associated with crisis, trauma, conflict, grief, and suffering. People imagine therapists spending their days immersed in the most difficult aspects of the human experience.
And while suffering is certainly present, it isn't what stands out most to me after years of doing this work.
What stands out is courage.
For myself and the therapists on our team, this work feels sacred; not because we spend our days witnessing what is broken in people, but because we spend our days witnessing something far more remarkable: the human capacity for growth.
Every day, people walk into our offices and voluntarily do something that most of us are naturally wired to avoid.
They look inward.
There is a saying that occasionally circulates online:
"The people who go to therapy are often not the ones who need it."
While I don't fully agree with it (in truth, I believe everyone can benefit from greater self-awareness, reflection, and emotional insight), I do understand the sentiment.
The observation isn't really about who "needs" therapy. It's about who is willing to engage in the difficult work of self-examination. Because one of the great paradoxes of life is that the people most committed to understanding themselves are often not the people convinced they have everything figured out.
They are often the opposite.
They are the people willing to question themselves.
The people willing to challenge their assumptions.
The people willing to ask, "What am I missing?"
The people willing to consider that there may be another perspective they haven't yet seen.
This is something that is easy to overlook. In private practice, therapy is entirely voluntary. No one is forcing people to attend-requiring them to examine their behaviour, revisit painful experiences, confront unhealthy patterns, or challenge long-held beliefs.People choose to do this.
They willingly invest their time, emotional energy, vulnerability, and financial resources in the pursuit of greater self-understanding. When you think about it that way, therapy becomes less about the stigma around mental illness and more about human development.
At its core, therapy is an act of curiosity. It is the decision to remain open to the possibility that there is more to learn about yourself.
Psychologist Carol Dweck's research on growth mindset transformed how we understand learning and development. A growth mindset is the belief that our abilities, behaviours, emotional capacities, and ways of relating to the world are not fixed. They can evolve through reflection, effort, learning, and experience.
People with a growth mindset do not believe they have already arrived at the final version of themselves. Instead, they approach life with a different question:
"What can this teach me?"
That question is deceptively simple.
It requires humility.
It requires flexibility.
It requires the willingness to tolerate uncertainty.
Most importantly, it requires accepting that growth may demand change; not from everyone else, but from ourselves.
What often strikes me about therapy clients is not their pathology. It is their humility.
The willingness to sit across from another person and openly explore questions such as:
• Why do I keep finding myself in the same situation?
• What role am I playing in this pattern?
• Why do I react so strongly to certain things?
• What am I avoiding?
• How might I grow from this experience?
These are not easy questions. In fact, they may be among the most difficult questions a person can ask. It is often far easier to blame circumstances, criticize others, or convince ourselves that change is impossible.
Self-awareness requires something different. It requires intellectual honesty.
People often imagine therapists spending their days listening to problems. What I experience is something far more inspiring.
I watch people develop insight where there was once confusion.
I watch parents decide that generational patterns will stop with them.
I watch people learn how to set boundaries after decades of self-sacrifice.
I watch individuals challenge beliefs about themselves that they have carried since childhood.
I watch people become more accountable, more compassionate, more resilient, and more intentional.
Perhaps most importantly, I watch people discover that they are capable of change.
Not because someone gave them the answers. But because they became willing to ask themself the questions.
When people ask me how I do this work every day, I often find myself thinking that they may be asking the wrong question.
The more interesting question is:
How often do we get to witness human beings actively choosing growth?
How often do we get to sit across from people who are willing to confront uncomfortable truths in service of becoming healthier versions of themselves?
How often do we get to watch someone move from defensiveness to curiosity, from avoidance to accountability, from self-judgment to understanding?
That is what therapists have the privilege of witnessing every day. That is what makes it an incredible honour, and why this work feels sacred.
Because therapy is often filled with people courageous enough to admit they don't have all the answers, and humble enough to keep learning.
