Why do we need therapists?

Alain de Botton

In the last blog post we touched on how psychotherapy can tackle more than the mental health issues we so often hear about - anxiety, depression and stress. But what are those kinds of issues, where do they come from, and how can psychotherapy help?

We recently saw this excerpt from a longer interview of Alain de Botton. de Botton is a philosopher and founder of the School of Life, and has spent much of his career translating classical philosophy into lessons that are relevant and helpful to people living in the modern world. Much of this centres around how to live a life more authentically and less negatively affected by the things that inevitably happen over the course of a lifetime.

In the interview he does a fantastic job of explaining things like self-sabotage, and presents some very understandable reasons for why some people might do this and where the behaviour originally comes from.

Along the way, he also describes one of the ways a therapist can support beneficial change in their client that will give them the opportunity of living a much better life.

It's well worth listening to the whole excerpt (which is just over 25 mins) but if you want to go straight to the part most focused on psychotherapy, jump to the 5:00 mark and listen to the next 12 mins.

If you're interested in starting therapy, take the guesswork out of finding the right therapist, and book an in-depth assessment with an expert therapist today.