In their training, therapists learn that common sense is not always useful in counseling others. Human life is full of paradoxes and contradictions.

Here is someone who needs to learn better how to let others have some power and influence over her without her feeling too dependent.

It may be important not to accept the stories and points of view presented in therapy but to be always on the alert for alternative explanations. Almost always, after a long and passionate tale of woe and desperation, full of explanations and the assignment of blame, I offer an alternative point of view.

We are full of preconceptions about ourselves and are limited by them. The actuality of our being is not something we have an easy time making room for.

To say someone is doing something effortlessly is to betray ignorance of the effort they put into it.