The Sad Truth About Help: Why Well-Intentioned Isn't Always Well-Done

I wish I knew what actually kicked everything off. What was the trigger for… well, all of this. If I knew, maybe I could write some kind of guide. But right now? I can’t really recommend my path. Not unless you’re prepared to lose two family members in quick succession and your beloved cat on top of it all. Mix that with the usual everyday brand of insanity, and you’re on the right track.

Oh, and if you can manage to torpedo your entire friend group while simultaneously getting tangled in the web of a ‘romance scam’, after dodging relationships for a solid decade, then yeah. I think you can be pretty damn sure something is about to give.

But for me, everything has changed. I feel like I can finally move on. And if I’d followed the advice from friends and family? I’d probably still be blissfully oblivious, avoiding any real responsibility for my life. Even if I had talked to a therapist three years ago, I doubt it would’ve made much of a difference. Here's the thing: all the stuff you might see as a flashing red light? To me, it was just… Tuesday. Completely mundane, nothing special whatsoever. And if I were talking to a shrink, why would I ever bring up things that seem perfectly normal? Sure, therapists can sometimes pull off things that border on magic, I get it. But for him to have truly untangled the mess in my head, to really get to the bottom of my issues... well, he would've needed more than a textbook. A functioning crystal ball might've been a good start.

That points to a massive issue with psychotherapy, doesn't it? In some cases, sure, checking into a clinic can be a good move. It creates this isolated, controlled environment where you can work on your problems. But that’s also the fatal flaw for, I’d guess, a hell of a lot of patients. If your biggest problem is your normal, everyday environment, how is anyone supposed to diagnose you when that core problem is absent? When you don’t even know it’s a problem because, to you, it’s just… life? Hearing this story more and more often, it’s kind of insane that this isn't just common sense.

I don’t really have a name for what I’ve been through. But it’s tragic, isn't it? That it took all this to show me the most basic mistakes we were all making. Take my aunt moving to a new place. I realize now that she and I were exactly the same when it came to keeping a room tidy.

You know that saying, ‘As the room looks, so the mind is’? For most people, cleaning the room to clear the mind might be the right advice. And for me, I can say with 100% certainty: if my room is a disaster, it’s because my mind is a disaster. It’s not the other way around. And in that moment, when the barrier in my brain finally lifts, I start cleaning with a passion you wouldn't believe.

Knowing this now, really getting it, just makes me incredibly sad when I think about my aunt. We always helped her move, helped her clean. But when it came to cleaning her mind? All she ever heard was, ‘Maybe you should see a therapist.’ No one ever surprised her with a mental deep-clean. All we did was enable the mess for an unnecessarily long time. Every time it was about to boil over, we’d step in and help, but only ever on the surface.

And honestly, therapy probably wouldn’t have had a significant effect anyway, not if her problems were tied to other people.

Realizing that… it lifted the last bit of fog. And that realization, it truly breaks my heart. Because the sad part is, all the people who were in the wrong genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. They offered help, so what more could they do, right?

But yeah, in retrospect, it’s probably for the best they didn’t do more. The fact that I turned into a somewhat better version of myself… I don’t think that was a given.

So I guess this is it. This is the ‘growing up’ I was meant to do. There’s nothing else coming. In this blog, and in others, I’m always trying to pinpoint that one moment where it all began. And thinking about my own behavior, like me ghosting birthday parties for reasons I could never explain… it suddenly all makes sense.