What if a part of you WANTS a “broken and dysfunctional” relationship?

It all begins with an idea.

In order for psychotherapy to be in any way productive and beneficial, it must be built on a framework where freedom of choice is elevated as the highest ideal. If we do not nurture this thought properly, then the whole effort will fall flat on its face, because the only person who can bring about real, deep, and meaningful change in your life, is YOU.

The drug abuse, the constant anger, the depression, and panic attacks… all that is the surface. It’s not even the Problem (yes, with a capital P!). These admittedly troubling patterns are the result of months, years, perhaps even decades of trying to come to terms with the Truth.

The frailty of our existence, its lack of inherent meaning, our own mortality and loneliness, the irreversible passage of time, and the heavy burden of responsibility for how things play out are the fundamental parameters of human existence which we cannot escape, no matter who we are and no matter how we choose to live.

If anything, behind all our worries and concerns and all of the so-called symptoms that we may manifest, lies, I suspect, our fear of knowing the real truth of how temporary we all are.

In psychotherapy there are no gurus, there is no special secret knowledge, and there are no experts in the old sense of the word. It simply offers the time and the place for all those conversations with ourselves that, to our detriment, are easy to postpone. It offers a way to express what was until now unsaid and to explore what is all feels like and what it means.

The trap is this: the expectation that life can be free of suffering, free of worry, free of fear, and free of anxiety. That somehow, somewhere, someone will give you something, tell you something, or teach you something that will just take all those troublesome emotions away, just like in that classic and very sad movie ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’.

Unfortunately, anyone who sells you such a promise is very simply misleading you. It doesn’t matter if the person saying it is a priest, a guru, a philosopher, or even (god forbid!) a therapist – it’s an expectation that will always lead to even further suffering and disappointment.

The goal is not to have the clearest path, but to actually walk it to the end. And there are certainly ways to get there, regardless of how many obstacles you find in the world. This also over-turns what is perhaps the biggest illusion blocking our way: that we can somehow clear the path once and for all and free ourselves from suffering.

For all intents and purposes, the past is a thing of the past, now done and gone and just a figment of our imagination at this point. The goal of therapy is to create a future with new parameters, new rules, a new way of life where the problem has become a part of the solution.

Regardless of the gifts and sorrows that fortune and nature gave you, it is impossible to escape responsibility, no matter who you are.

Life is unfair, and as Chuck Pahlaniuk points out in his glorious book 'Fight Club', "On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero". If there was ever such a thing as a rule of life, that's probably it.

It's clear that who we are to other people and what they think of us plays a huge role in how we view ourselves. It's innevitable, it's hard-wired into us. So it's only natural that we try to portray ourselves as being someone that others will find valuable, based on what we believe other people consider to be valuable.

And here is the trap: before you know it, you are constructing a self and a life whose framework is based almost entirely on who others want you to be.

Maybe being told that our jobs should be meaningful, that our relationships should be painless and photogenic, and that we are all somehow special and destined for greatness, has caused frustration and disappointment rather than salvation.

It used to be the movies that projected us into the realm of the fantastic, where people live perfect lives and are forever at the peak of their talents and beauty. Now however, even the movies have been upstaged by the vast majority of social media users who seem intent to portray themselves as the stars of their own perfect and meaningful lives. And as we watch each other, this raises in each of us the nagging question: 'why can't my life be as wonderful as theirs?'.

So it's spring time, and the almond trees are blooming. At the end of the day, we don't hold the fact that they don't bloom all year around against them. We just take it for granted that they have their season, and we give them the care, space and time that they need to get there.

In an almost God-like manner, our brains like to create structure out of almost nothing. If you scribble down two dots with a line below them, you suddenly see a face. This is how keen our perception is to formulate a world around us that makes sense and seems orderly.

On a more abstract level, this is the case with even more complex things. If you have ever watched an odd surreal movie or read an equally strange book, or stood in front of an abstract painting, you probably found yourself wondering 'what on earth did I just experience?', and then began looking deeper. Before you know it, you have an theory that explains the entire movie! And yet if you ask another person, they will have a completely different point of view.

'Et In Arcadia Ego' can roughly be interpreted as 'I also was an Arcadian'. This saying has been circulating since ancient times, and was often inscribed on tombstones. It references Arcadia, a land-locked rural part of Greece, which was considered to be the land of nymphs, natural beauty and simplicity. The intent of the inscription was to remind the reader that although the deceased person may have lived a wonderful and idyllic life, even he had to cope with the inevitability of loss.

Humanity's search for explanations regarding existence and ultimately a form of meaning which would justify it, is as old as written memory. Our ancestors passed down stories of gods, heroes, and every day people who would defy the odds and perhaps even their idea of divine order, for the benefit of mankind.