The True Cost of Therapy
I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t go to therapy. Why most people won’t. And why this work definitely isn’t for everybody.
You think therapy is financially expensive? Money is honestly the least costly part.
Therapy is the hardest work you will ever do. In order to receive healing, we first have to willingly choose to go to a cross. And that’s a tough pill to swallow. Because by the time most people are even considering therapy, they’ve been used up, spit out, abused, and crucified over and over again. By people who should have loved them. By people who claimed to love them, but then rejected and abandoned them. By people they thought they could trust, who sucked them dry and then betrayed them.
They wonder, Why does this keep happening to me? What’s WRONG with me? They’re in so much pain, they find that they’re finally willing to pay for therapy to find relief. To find hope again.
But first, the therapist asks them to go to a cross. They don’t make them. They can’t go to the cross for them—that’s the client’s work. But that’s where the invitation is leading. That’s where the therapist is pointing.
What? The client thinks. You’re telling me to go to a cross again? But that’s what I came here to get away from! You’re supposed to finally lead me to the resurrection!
But, to their dismay, they find that a cross stands before them yet again. And—if they choose to continue therapy once they’re out of crisis mode—it lies before them again. And again. No one is forcing them to go. They could say no. They could turn away.
A wise mentor told me, “Therapy feels like clawing your skin off. And then just as it starts to heal, you rip it off again.”
Therapy is not a 50-minute appointment once a week. It is a lifestyle. It is a whole new way of living. And even if you stop having a weekly session with a therapist, you’re equipped to continue doing the work on your own.
The True Payoff of Therapy
That same mentor said, “This work is the hardest work you will ever do. It is also the most rewarding work you will ever do. And it will cost you everything. It’s not for everyone. And I have never known anyone to regret doing it.”
I know people whose income has literally doubled while in therapy. I know others whose marriages have been saved. I know still others whose suicidal ideation has transformed into hope.
And these payoffs are the least of the rewards.
Those who are willing to make going to the cross a lifestyle—a place where truth drowns out lies, where love overcomes hate, where healing swallows up pain, where reconciliation replaces division, and where an unexplainable comfort soothes even the most jagged, torturous grief—learn that there is always resurrection on the other side.
Because this time, the cross is different. It is not the world crucifying them. It is not the accuser having his way with them. Instead, they are going voluntarily, with a God who has already paved the way and is walking right alongside them, and with a faithful guide who has also visited that place many times. Rather than being crucified by a cruel world against their will, they are willingly giving themselves up. They are facing their greatest fears, their deepest pain, and the darkest parts of themselves, and they are emerging on the other side victorious.
Ultimately, in the lifestyle of therapy, the reward is you. You living freely, fully alive. Not bound to unconscious patterns, feeling trapped by generational curses and family cycles you feel doomed to repeat. You are autonomous. Spontaneous. Aware. Connected. And fun. That’s right—you discover that you are really a lot of fun! And it’s a precious gift that you’re here on planet Earth, at this moment in history.
50 Minutes a Week Is Just the Beginning
The 50-minute session once a week is not what you are ultimately paying for. And that’s not even where most of the work happens. You are paying for enduring life change. You are making deposits into your heart and brain that you can withdraw, with interest, for the rest of your life.
Outside of that session, your brain continues to work in the background, uprooting the weeds and nurturing the good seeds that have been planted, depositing nutrients back into depleted, deprived, neglected soil. Your brain and heart are realigning, reestablishing connection. Your brain is relearning how to interpret input from the environment and from your heart. Your body also benefits as it’s finally receiving signals that it’s safe, that it can breathe deeply and relax. The toxicity is leaving. The poison is seeping out.
And then, these seeds that have been planted in you naturally multiply throughout your family and community. You can’t help it. As a human, you are part of many systems. And when one part of the system changes, the other parts have to adjust in response.
This change isn’t easy. It can be another part of going to the cross, because these other parts of the systems you’re in have gotten used to the way things are, and they will fight tooth and nail to maintain equilibrium. You may feel, in an emotional and spiritual sense, like others are throwing darts at you, trying frantically to keep you from changing—just like a bucket of crabs is doomed because if one crab tries to crawl out, the others will grab it and pull it down.
But once you stand firm in the day they try to crucify you, and having done all, continue to take your stand, the other parts of the system may choose to accept their own crosses to bear. And should they choose to do their own work, they too will find resurrection on the other side. And a life they never dreamed could be so fulfilling and abundant.
If these costs and rewards sound like something you’re up for, then therapy may be for you. But it’s certainly not for everyone. And it is wise to count the cost.
