I knew my therapist from working with him professionally. I chose him because I knew he was able to, and would say, "You are SO full of shit!" Which he did, more than once.
Went to him for two years, then an additional six.
When you've tried on your own, and it hasn't worked, and you need another point of view ... therapy can be incredibly useful. But it's like the quote:
He had a friend, a real indivisualist ... He spelled his name Hen3ry ... the 3 was silent, you see ...
He always wanted to be a writer. He wrote one book, about a childhood necrophiliac, who fulfilled his life ambition by becoming County Coroner.
I remember, as they took him off to the Massachusetts State Home for the Bewildered, his last words:
Life's like a sewer:
What you get out of it
Depends on what you put into it.
Tom Lehrer