Psychotherapy. One of Society's oldest Taboos.

50 min., once a week, we are hiding in a room for two. 50 min. of intimacy, emotional exposure and bonding. Everything is under disclosure, confidential, a secret that only we are sharing.

Sometimes, seeing a psychotherapist can feel like a secret affair - a taboo - an involvement with someone who provides space for those unmet longing needs under the condition of strict non-disclosure.

If it all came out and people knew about it, what would they think?! All of our personal reflections, our vulnerabilities and our fearful, even controversial beliefs laid out bare, for all to see.

Perhaps it would be the same as when they discover that you were cheating on our partner. Secretly. For months. They would judge, condemn and resent.

Often, my clients are afraid to speak openly about seeking therapy due to the stigma that surrounds it. It's hard for them to think otherwise.

The world is filled with myths about therapy. Ill-informed beliefs that make it almost impossible to candidly admit, openly share or even more utopian, proudly say that they are seeing a therapist.

I encounter those myths everywhere and they follow along the lines of:

• Therapy is for "mental people", so who seeks it, must be crazy, right?
• If it is not a severe life crisis, I have to handle it myself.
• Therapy is for the weak.
• When people find out, they will not take me seriously at work anymore.
• and so on...

So instead of speaking up and letting people know where we actually stand, we seek help secretly. Way too late. Or, for the most part, not at all.

The World Health Organization found the average delay for seeking therapy for mood disorders, such as depression, is 2 years after onset in Germany. For people with substance abuse, it takes 9 years and for those facing anxiety, 13 years on average before seeking therapy.

13 years!

Imagine living with chronic back pain, every day for 13 years, without even seeing a doctor to check if there is a route to pain relief?

Instead of taking care of ourselves early on, where chances of healing much higher, we wait. We ignore. We swallow. We bury. We try to hide what is really going on...until we start to crack, break, or burst.

Neglecting our mental health can not only harm our own wellbeing or performance, but it also harms our interpersonal relationships. When bad moods give rise to full-on fights, lack of energy turns into social withdrawl, and shared laughter transforms into shared helplessness.

So sometimes I day dream:

• What would happen if we stopped being afraid of what other people think?
• What would happen if we could part with shame and leave our sense of inadequacy behind?
• What would happen if we boasted about counselling and therapy, as we do with fitness classes, gyming or spa days?

To me personally, it would mean to be upgraded from a secret affair to the wife, from a taboo to a normal conversation, from someone that no one can ever find out about to someone you trust and you grow with. Openly.

“My brain and my heart are really important to me. I don’t know why I wouldn’t seek help to have those things be as healthy as my teeth.” ―Kerry Washington

It might not be such a stretch. Changing attitudes toward mental health are setting off positive changes in the health & wellness sector.

More cultural icons are opening up about their experiences. More organisations are starting to take responsibility for the mental health of their employees, startups are improving accessibility to therapy and counseling and more people are entering therapy than ever before.

Stigma is slowly dissipating, mental health awareness is on the up and, as a result, new ways of treatment are starting to come to the fore.

But we still have a long way to go.

Each and every one of us has the power to change the narrative around mental health and do away with its taboo status for good.

It can be as simple as:

• "I'm happy to hear, that you are taking care of yourself."
• "You seem a little on edge, is there anything I could do for you?"
• or a "If you need it, here is the contact of someone I talked to."

We all have mental health. So everyone has a story to tell. About themselves, a family member or someone they know. In my experience, sharing these stories helps us build a true connection and lets us live at least a little lighter day-to-day.

Psychotherapy is for the weak and the insane!

Psychotherapy is not just to treat severe mental illness. Psychotherapy is a great route to self-discovery and to better overall wellbeing. It is a way to build positive mental health habits that prevent you from hitting rock bottom when life, inevitably, takes a wrong turn.

The earlier and more consistently we invest in our mental health, the more we are capable of leading a life we want, deserve and enjoy.

Too often I hear clients say: "Why didn't I start this 10 years ago?" -

Let's break the circle. Let's start today. Let's start together.