Have you ever had therapy? Not physical therapy. Emotional therapy. Counseling?

I personally think that every individual needs counseling. I would make it mandatory before college. Then I would encourage you to go a few times during college. Definitely before marriage and several times during marriage.

I would say that couples should have counseling before starting a family, and then many times after you’ve added those children to your lives.

Maybe you’ve never been to counseling? You might have some preconceived ideas that make you a little wary of the whole process. I hate to tell you, you’re probably wrong.

First of all, if you’ve never been you may think you don’t need counseling. Well, you’re wrong. You’re messed up.

You need therapy. I’m not sure how it happened to you. You lost your favorite stuffed toy when you were 4-years-old and now you are afraid of life taking away all that is precious and secure to you.

You were locked out of the house after you came home past curfew and now you have trust issues with people in authority.

Your first boss fired you for no good reason and now you have an unhealthy compulsion to constantly prove yourself in the workplace.

Did you figure it out yet? Why do you overreact? Why do you get depressed? Why can’t you calm down? Why can’t you just sit and be bored with nothing to do without feeling like your skin is crawling?

This is why we all need therapy. Do yourself a favor and find a therapist. Go by yourself, go with your spouse, go with your kid. Whatever. The beauty is that the therapist doesn’t even have to be all that good. You’ll see. You’re the one who’s going to be doing all the hard work.

Just go. Because we seriously aren’t supposed to be able to do this all alone. There are people out there who are trained to help you get to the bottom of it. They’ll listen and they’ll talk. They’ll ask you hard questions and make you cry. They’ll compliment you and encourage you and give you great advice. Then they’ll give you really bad advice that you’ll ignore, but the advice will be so bad you’ll come up with a better solution on your own.

You’ll come away with ideas that you can continue to apply at different times in your life. Ones that help you focus and gain balance, ones that can help put everything back in perspective.

The last counselor I had gave me one of those great questions.

Ask yourself, “Why do we do what we do?”

Meaning, why are you making the choices you’re making? Why do you homeschool? Why do you work where you work? Why do you parent the way you parent? Why do you spend your money the way you spend your money? Or spend your time the way you spend your time?

If you can’t answer these questions…well, guess where you should go?